
Class _3S^t_^__ 
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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Spiritual Ships. 



An Allegory of Religious Characters 
and Experiences. 



BY 



/ 

GEORGE DOUGLAS WATSON 



Author of ''Holiness Manual/* "White Robes," ''lyove 
Abounding,'* ''Secret of Power," "Coals of Fire," 
/'Soul Food," "Pure Gold," "Steps to the Throne," 
"A Pot of Oil," "Types of the Holy Spirit," etc. 



** Launch out your ships into the deep." Luke 5: 2-4. 
* 'Behold also the ships." James 3: 4. 



Copyright by the Author. 
196;?.^ 



Published by I^ivixg Words Company, 
Wilkinsburg, Pa. 



George Burgum, Printer, 5208 Butler Street, Pittsburgh, Pa. 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



- 


PAGE. 


A Spiritual Sea- Voyage 


5 


Tow-boat Christians 


- 13 


The Row Boat Christian 


- 23 


Sail Boat Christians 


- 32 


Sail Ship Christians - . - 


- 47 


Steamboat Christians . - . 


- 60 


Coast Steamer Christians 


- 75 


Steamtug Christians 


- 84 


Ocean Steamship Christians - 


- 97 


Battle Ship Christians 


115 


Sub-Marine Ship Christians - 


- 129 


Entering the Harbour 


142 



A SPIRITUAI. SKA VOYAGK. 



CHAPTER I. 

A Spirituai, Sea Voyage. 

It is a time of new and thrilling interest in 
a family circle, when one or more in the 
family prepare to start on a strange and long 
journey for the first time. Maps are studied, 
railway and steamship guide books are dili- 
gently consulted, and the various routes of 
travel, and the places to be visited, are com- 
pared and re-compared. The study of geo- 
graphy is revived by every member of the 
family, and far away rivers, and mountains, 
and seas, and islands, and cities, in which 
there has never been any personal interest 
taken by the family, are suddenly invested 
with attraction for every member in the home. 
Oh ! what a time it is ; the buying of new 
strong trunks, and sorting out what will be 
needed, and then packing them full, it may 
be with many things that will never be needed, 
and leaving out some essential article that will 
be in demand before the journey ends. And 
then what a glowing fondness of special 
affection and interest is called forth for the 
particular ones who are going on the journey. 



6 A SPIRITUAI, SKA VOYAGE. 

They become all at once the centres of domes- 
tic devotion, and they are fairly drowned with 
affectionate attentiveness, and **God bless 
you/' and wishes for a happy voyage. There 
is another voyage, far more thrilling in inter- 
est, upon a journey much longer, and across 
moral and spiritual mountains, and plains, 
and rivers, and seas, far vaster than the little 
surface of this earth, and to a distant port, 
brighter and more tranquil than any crystal 
harbor of tropic islands, and into a city whose 
magnitude and unfading splendor surpasses 
the dream of all the tower builders of this 
world ; and upon this journey souls are con- 
stantly being urged by a sweet pleading voice 
that is evermore sounding over land and sea. 
Could we but draw aside the vail of time and 
sense, and watch the deep interest that angels 
and heavenly saints take in the conversion of 
a soul, and getting it embarked on a voyage 
for immortal glory ; and could we hear the 
soft rustling of their wings, and catch the low 
whisper of their musical words, and see the 
sweet burning flashes in their love-lit eyes, it 
would infinitely out-do the packing of trunks, 
and the social interest of starting on any 
earthly journey. After all, is not everything 
on earth and in human life, a shadowing forth 



A SPIRITUAI, SKA VOYAGK. 7 

of things of a higher order, and of an age to 
come? We propose in this little book, to 
trace out a spiritual sea voyage, the journey 
of a soul from sin and self, through various 
stages, till it reaches its eternal home, in the 
capacious and unruffled harbor of the bosom 
of God's spotless love. Who will join us in 
our journey? We do not expect to return to 
the old Adamic homestead any more ; as we 
are not only travelers, but emigrants as well, 
we shall sell out the old place back in the 
country, and leave all the old garments and 
rubbish behind us, and pack only a light 
luggage of essential things ; and though for 
the first few stages in our voyage, our un- 
weaned hearts may suffer a little natural 
home sickness for the old home of self, yet we 
will press on, till brighter and more ennobling 
scenes begin to satisfy the home instincts of 
our nature, and we not only get weaned from 
the past, but come to abhor what we once 
loved, and be drawn on with ever increasing 
fascination with the things of God. We will 
start from some plain, rugged country home, 
away back in the hills, where the people know 
nothing of ships, or of the great sea upon 
which they sail ; for how true it is that man 
in his natural sinful state knows nothing of 



8 A SPIRITUAI. SKA VOYAGE. 

the ocean of God's nature, or of that spiritual 
commerce in heavenly things, which is carried 
on by devoted saints in the Holy Ghost. We 
shall first take a humble canal boat which is 
towed by a mule, till we come to navigable 
water. This canal boat represents the lowest 
state of legality in religion, of a soul that has 
no propelling power on board itself, bat is 
drawn along by the persuasion or the author- 
ity of some friend, or church, or social law. 
When we reach the terminus of the canal, we 
will get into a row boat, and seize the paddle, 
or the oar, and try the strength of our muscle 
and skill in crossing the river or the harbor. 
This row boat represents the second stage of 
legality in religion, v^here the soul is awakened 
more personally about the things of God and 
eternity, and begins to exert all its strength 
and knowledge to be good, to break away 
from sin, and keep the commandments. This 
row boat state is higher than the canal boat, 
because the moving energy is on board, in the 
form of an awakened conscience, and a de- 
cision in the will for righteousness. In the 
next place, having exhausted our strength in 
rowing, we get on board of a small sail vessel, 
that is wafted along by the Creator's energy 
in the wind. This represents a tired ^oul, 



A SPIRITUAI. SKA VOYAGK. 9 

after struggling to get right, and exhausting 
itself, giving itself up in simple faith to Jesus; 
to be born again by the blowing of the Vvind 
of the Holy Spirit, for Jesus says, **as the 
wind bloweth where it listeth, and we know 
not from v/hence it cometh, or whither it 
goeth, so is every one that is born of the 
Spirit/* In every place in Scripture where 
the Holy Spirit is compared to the wind, it is 
in connection with imparting life, and so our 
sail vessel is a type of the regenerated state in 
our voyage. After coasting in the bay, and 
along the shore, in a small sail boat, which 
represents the youthful experience in justifi- 
cation, we then board a great sail ship, and 
go out on the high seas, which represents the 
strong and established experience of the be- 
believer in the justified life. This stage in 
our pilgrimage furnishes us with some beauti- 
ful studies in spiritual navigation, and we 
have occasion to find our latitude and longitude 
in the things of God, and how to use the 
compass of God's Word, and the log of inward 
experience. Then after finding the great 
invention of steam, and of how ships can have 
their sailing apparatus transferred from the 
outside down into the heart of the vessel, in 
the form of engine, and fire, and water, and 



lO A SPIRITUAL SEA VOYAGE. 

steam, developing a new and mightier force 
for propelling us along, we take passage on 
the steamboat, which in our allegory sets forth 
the sanctified life, the hidden fire of the Holy 
Ghost working in the heart, and pushing the 
soul onward with amazing zeal. And as the 
steamboat is a new creation, and not the mere 
development out of a sail vessel, so our 
entrance into the sanctified state, is a specific 
work of grace, and not a gradual evolution 
from pardon. After taking a steamboat, we 
linger awhile with some side wheelers and 
coast steamers, and make a detour into some 
rivers and bays, and along coast lines, in 
order to accommodate some timid souls that 
are afraid, or have no calling to go beyond the 
sight of land ; which fitly corresponds with 
a class of sanctified people, who in their feel- 
ings and service for God, keep under the 
shelter of their particular sectarian doctrine or 
leaders. We next transfer to a staunch little 
steam tug, that is built for marvelous strength 
and utility in helping other ships, which 
beautifully agrees with those sturdy, great 
hearted saints, that have special gifts and 
calling for pulling souls off the rocks, and out 
of storms, and into harbor. In the next place 
we take voyage on a great iron ocean liner, 



A SPIRITUAI. SEA VOYAGE. II 

and have occasion to witness the true grandeur 
of a steamship at sea, in storm and calm, 
which sets forth the strong and manifold 
experiences under the guiding power of the 
Holy Spirit. 

We then board a great man-of-war, a float- 
ing fortress, the special property and instrument 
of the government, and find an opportunity 
for fighting some battles, which typifies those 
conditions of extraordinary heroism and con- 
flict in the lives of great reformers and spiritual 
leaders, who are God*s chosen agents to 
pioneer His work, to head new religious move- 
ments, and open up new realms of Bible truth, 
or missionary operations. By this time we 
have got into the confidence of ship builders, 
and government officials, and are quietly 
taken on board of a sub-marine ship, run by 
electricity, and sink entirely out of sight in 
the depths of the sea, and explore that vast, 
tranquil, hidden world of wonders, which 
blessedly sets forth the ultimate stage in the 
sanctified life on this earth, of sinking down 
deep into God, in a life of marvelous prayer, 
and unearthly stillness, where the vast silent 
waters of the divine perfections are explored, 
and studied, and admired with ever increasing 
delight, and the soul is lost in a sea of love, 



12 A SPIRITUAI. SKA VOYAGE. 

and prayer, and divine contemplation. Come, 
are you ready to start? The time is up, I 
hear the horn of the canal driver blowing for 
the locks to open and let down the boat, as it 
takes its first step towards the sea. All aboard 
for the river of grace, for the ocean of love, 
for the City of God, whose white glittering 
towers and sweet voiced inhabitants, are in- 
viting us far away across the ocean. 



TOW-BOAT CHRISTIANS. I J 



CHAPTER II. 
Tow-BoAT Christians. 

As we start upon our spiritual navigation 
from the great mountains and forests of the 
wild life of nature, we must be content to take 
the lowest and humblest steps that belong to 
beginners. The lowest class of vessels that go 
by water are those of the tow-boat rank, such 
as are used on canals, and barges for hauling 
slow and heavy freight. 

There are two classes of boats that we must 
utilize in our journey before we come to the 
sail boat, which, in a proper sense, represents 
the life of a regenerated believer ; of one who 
has the assurance of the Spirit that he is a 
child of God. In like manner there are two 
forms of legal religion which many persons 
pass through before reaching the assurance of 
justification. The tow-boat is pulled through 
the water by a force outside of itself, in the 
form of a mule on the bank of the canal, or of 
some sail or steamboat, to which it is tied with 
a strong rope or hawser. The other form of 
legal religion is represented by the row boat, 
which is a struggling force put forth by some 



14 TOW-BOAT CHRISTIANS. 

one inside the boat, which we will consider in 
the next chapter. 

Thus the tow-boat sets forth the pulling of 
a soul along in the ways of righteousness, by 
outside and natural forces, or the ropes of law, 
and is the lowest form of a religious life. In 
the true sense of the word the canal boat and 
the barge do not represent what the Scriptures 
mean by the word Christian, but we are now 
giving the modem and more accommodated 
use of the word, as embracing those who 
believe in the Scriptures, and are willing to 
put themselves under the restraints and obli- 
gations of religion, and begin seeking the 
lyord, if haply they may find Him. It is a 
sad fact that great multitudes who are classed 
as nominal Christians, are in this very lowest 
rank of canal boat legalism, and would never 
take one step in practical righteousness except 
they were drawn by a strong hawser, in the 
form of some law, or ceremony, or custom, 
or personal friendship. Most of the people 
that attend church services throughout the 
world, like the canal boat, do not possess on 
board, or within themselves, that awakened 
conscience, or sorrow for sin, or decision of 
right, or fear of God, sufficient to be amoving 
energy or a propelling force through the water; 



TOW-BOAT CHRISTIANS. 1 5 

but if left to themselves apart from some 
strong rope to pull them, they lie sluggish 
and still, or drift with the current whither 
soever it will carry them. Those of us who 
have served in some army, and know the 
rough and reckless life of soldiers or miners, 
have seen this truth glaringly illustrated. 
Thousands who at home, and under the soft 
and blessed restraints of domestic life, and the 
routine of daily toil, and the sound of Sabbath 
church bells, and the influence of strong saintly 
characters, and all the honorable institutions 
of well ordered society, were fairly good men, 
and upright in outward department ; when 
they were turned loose in the army or the 
mines, they soon threw off the pacific bandages 
of church and home, and like canal boats or 
barges on the Niagara river, without strong 
hawsers on the outside to hold them, they 
drifted rapidly to the awful precipice, and 
plunged into ruin. 

Such is life in the present age, and such are 
the facts in regard to untold millions of our 
fallen and frail brethren in Adam, which only 
proves the utter helplessness of the human 
character, and the need of a super-natural 
power that comes down from some other world, 
and ties itself around man's inner spirit to 



l6 TOW-BOAT CHRISTIANS, 

draw him to righteousness. The more we 
love God, and the more our hearts are softened 
by that charity that runs down from heaven ; 
the wider and deeper will be our sympathy 
for our fellow men, and instead of denouncing 
them for their wickedness, we v/ill weep, not 
only over their bad conduct, but over the 
terrible helplessness in their inner being, that 
like the poor drifting barge, has no energy in 
itself to stem the current. Well here we are 
in our canal boat state of religion, depending 
on some patient mule, or strong horse, or good 
tug boat, to pull us along through the pre- 
liminary steps of religion. So let us bid adieu 
to the dreary rocks, and lonely forests of the 
old natural life, and get on board of our tow 
boat that floats lazily in the quiet canal, away 
back near the head v/aters of some river, and 
see that the strong ropes are well fastened at 
the prow of our wills, and begin our journey 
down to the river, bay, or harbor, from whence 
we hope in due time to launch out on the 
high seas of a holy and victorious voyage. 
While we are being slowly towed along through 
changing scenery of landscape or river, let us 
spend the time examining the various ropes 
and horse power that draw us onward. 

I. Tow boat professors of religion are 



TOW-BOAT CHRISTIANS. 1 7 

drawn by the rope of temporal fear, and tem- 
poral good, that may come to them as a 
consequence of their serving or not serving 
the lyord. The keen, swift action of a lively 
conscience, belongs more properly to the row 
boat class of religion, and so the case we are 
now considering is even lower down than an 
aroused conscience, but it is that state where 
people live on the surface, and can be moved 
mostly by external, surface, and temporal 
motives of restraint from sin. Though such 
motives are temporary and transitory, yet let 
us not despise them, for they serve an import- 
ant part in the lives of most people. Some 
Christians speak very depreciatingly of weak 
states of grace, and of acting from earthly 
motives of temporal good or harm, but such 
persons forget that in their past years they 
have acted from the same motives, and been 
influenced by little things which they now 
consider as mere trifles. It takes a mature 
state of grace to properly appreciate the weak- 
ness that is common to the faint beginnings of 
religion. The Old Testament is filled with 
motives of a temporal character, to draw the 
Lord's people to ways of righteousness. If 
the Israelites would obey God, there would 
come long life, freedom from disease, victory 



1 8 TOW-BOAT CHRISTIANS. 

over enemies, blessings in basket and store, 
in the fruit of their bodies, their cattle, and 
their fields. On the other hand if they for- 
sook God, a long caravan of calamities would 
overtake them. Those grand old Scriptures 
have never been repealed, and God still appeals 
to man in his compound nature of body, soul, 
and spirit ; and still uses the hopes of temporal 
good, and the fears of temporal evil, as strong 
cords to diaw men from wickedness to right- 
eousness. The prison, the gallows, the dread 
of some terrible form of sickness, or disgrace, 
acts with power on millions of mankind, and 
to speak with scorn against the wisdom of 
these motives of fear, betrays a mind exceed- 
ingly ignorant of the great laws that govern 
human creatures. Also the hope of temporal 
good, as a reward of well doing, though it be 
a lower motive than true Christians should 
act from, yet it is a legitimate motive, set 
forth in Scripture, and in the constitution of 
the human mind, and in the laws of society, 
and never can be ignored by intelligent faith. 
Hence thousands begin to serve God, drawn 
like a tow-boat by these outward visible cords 
of escaping earthly and temporal ruin, and the 
hope of gaining earthly, physical, social, and 
temporal good. We are constantly appealing 



TOW-BOAT CHRISTIANS. I9 

to children, to young people, to drunkards, to 
spendthrifts, to reckless people, with motives 
of danger in this life, and blessings in this 
life, and to their bodies as well as their souls, 
which are like the ropes that draw the tow- 
boat. God's providence over men is so vast 
and minute, it sweeps the entire range of 
motives, and hopes, and fears, of the body as 
well as the soul, and of time as well as 
eternity. 

2. Another strong hawser by which barge 
and canal boat Christians are taken in tow, is 
the personal influence and friendship of good 
saintly characters. We find a case like this 
in the history of the kings of Judah. In the 
time when Joash was a young prince in Jeru- 
salem, there lived a very godly priest named 
Jehoiada, who exerted a powerful influence in 
the city, and over the young king. We read 
that Joash did that which was right in the 
sight of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada, the 
priest. (2 Chron. 24 : 2.) But farther on in 
his life, after Jehoiada died, the strong exter- 
nal cord that drew Joash in right ways, was 
broken ; and like a barge cut loose from its 
tow, he drifted on the rocks, and persecuted 
and slew the prophets of God. 

There are numberless cases of a similar 



20 TOW-BOAT CHRISTIANS. 

character, where souls are under the restrain- 
ing and drawing power of a holy wife, or a 
godly husband, or a praying mother, or a 
righteous father, or a pious minister, or a 
devoted sister, or brother, or a deeply spiritual 
friend, who exerts a heavenly sway over the 
conduct, the words, the manners, the business 
transactions, and the feelings of those who 
have no deep seated principle of religion in 
the soul, no secret propelling power for right- 
eousness in their own hearts, but are led into 
many v/ays of goodness by the cordage of 
some other person's godliness. They are not 
in touch with God themselves, and are like 
those plants which are too weak to endure 
the light directly from the sun, but timidly 
open their flowers to the cooler light of the 
moon, and are influenced by divine things 
only at second-hand. In fact the majority of 
professing Christians never learn how to deal 
immediately with God, but get their inspira- 
tion second-handily from noon day believers. 
Their religion is lunar and not solar. For 
this reason those who love God with a personal 
love, should love him all the more, in as much 
as by them the Holy Spirit pulls along so 
many slow legalists, who otherwise would 
take no step at all toward God. 



TOW BOAT CHRISTIANS. 21 

3. Another rope by which the tow-boat 
class of Christians are drawn onward, may be 
termed the religious mechanism of the Chris- 
tian religion as it exists in the visible church, 
and religious society. There is much in 
religious education, and much of tenderness, 
and effection, and holy restraint, in the social 
habits of a Christian family, with its family 
altar, its evening hymns, its religious reading, 
its regular church going, to draw souls from 
the wrong to piety. Then there is much 
power in the public institutions of religion, 
the preaching of the Gospel, the solemn still- 
ness of the Sabbath day, the memories brought 
up by the melody of church bells, the tender 
pathos that hovers over the church yard or 
the cemetery, where the good of other days 
are buried, and much in the regular forms of 
religious service, with its sacred associations 
to touch the natural feelings of the imagina- 
tion and the heart, to restrain many a one 
from outvvard sin, and make them to think 
upon eternity and religion. It is true that 
many are environed with all of this education, 
and poetry, and pathos, who never admit the 
personal Savior into their heart of hearts, but 
whose lives are rendered better by the sway of 
these providential forces of religion. God 



22 TOW-BOAT CHRISTIANS. 

told the ancient Jews that he had drawn them 
with the cords of a man, which is just the 
thought we are unfolding in this chapter. 
Have we not all of us passed through this 
state, where we felt we had no strength to 
arouse ourselves, or to pray, or take a step 
toward God, but like the sluggish canal boat, 
were glad to have a father's prayers, or a 
mother's love, or some sweet and noble friend- 
ship come and tie themselves fast to us, and 
by appealing to our human love, draw us 
toward the right. We shall find in this trip, 
that we are taking in our spiritual ships, 
many sturdy things far beyond the tow-boat 
religionist, but in the meanwhile let us thank 
God for the first feeble drawings of a soul to- 
ward God, even though it creeps along at the 
slow pace of a canal boat, drawn by some 
humble mule, who is a servant of the law, an I 
yet may be carrying a precious cargo that 
will feed many a hungry one across the dis- 
tant seas. 



THE ROW BOAT CHRISTIAN. 23 



CHAPTER III. 

Thk Row Boat Christian. 

When we look at any plain ordinary human 
being how little we suspect what a vast multi- 
plied world he is, and hovv^ in many things he 
is like the huge globe on which we are walk- 
ing. Like the globe, a man is played upon 
by certain laws and forces on the outside, and 
then has a hidden world of lavvS and forces 
within himself, resembling the secret giant 
forces inside the earth. The external portion 
of the earth is operated upon by light, heat, 
cold, darkness, wind, rain, electrical currents, 
and the far away magic of celestial bodies, and 
waves of fine stellar magnetism that break in 
ceaseless silent music upon the shores of our 
world. Then far down in sub-marine and 
subterranean regions, there is a standing army 
of laws and forces in the form of central gravi- 
tation, liquid fire, geysers, the feverish heart 
of volcanoes, deep ocean currents, the potent 
chemistry in the soil, out of which spring forth 
forests and harvests, and then that ceaseless 
unnoticed vibration through the crust of the 
planet, like the soundless pulse of a sleeping 



24 THK ROW EOxVr CHRISTIAN. 

infant, as the world is rocked in its soft cradle 
of ether around the sun. Only think that our 
God, each of the three Divine Persons, are 
incessantly present in all these enormous and 
coFiiplex forces, living separated from these 
things, yet pervading, infolding, upholding, 
and perpetuating them with intelligent love 
and v/isdom. Well this plain ordinary look- 
ing man that we meet any hour on the street, 
and take so little notice of liini, is a vaster 
world, with a more complicated make-up, and 
a sublimer destiny, than the world we walk 
on. He also is played upon on his outer life 
by laws and forces manifold ; civil law, nat- 
ural law, social custom, w^hat others think of 
him, poverty, and wealth, natural scenery, 
religious institutions, church forms and cere- 
monies, the blistering criticisms of his fellows, 
the hatred of those who may be a thousand 
miles away, and the soft soothing streams of 
sympathy from friends, that fall like cooling 
showers upon his parched soul ; these and 
other outward influences act on him from 
without. But down in his inner being, like 
the planet, there is another world of laws and 
forces which he carries as a constant cargo on 
board himself wherever he goes. These inner 
forces take in his conscience, which must deal 



the; row boat christian. 25 

with questions of right and wrong ; his moral 
affections, his proclivities, and choices, his air 
castles, that are Vv^oven out in the secret loom 
of thought, and the central springs of action 
in the soul ; all correspond with the hidden 
forces inside the earih. There are two kinds 
of legalists, that is people whose religion is 
made up of serving God by set duties, and 
forms, and obligations of righteousness. The 
outward legalist is one that is led and moulded 
by outward forces in the visible church, and 
the cords of power from other people, which 
resemble the tow-boat, as explained in the 
previous chapter. Now we are to consider 
the inward legalist, that is one who endeavors 
to serve God by those higher laws that enter 
his inner life, and take hold upon the con- 
science, and the deep purposes of his will. 
He resembles the row boat, because a vessel 
that is propelled by oars has its moving force 
on board, within the vessel itself ; and there- 
fore takes higher rank in navigation than the 
canal boat which is pulled along by an outside 
force. Having gone the first stage of our 
great voyage on the spiritual canal boat, let 
us now transfer to a good row boat, and seize 
the oars, and pl}^' them vigorously across the 
river or harbor. In this stage of our journey 



26 THE ROW BOAT CHRISTIAN. 

we will row through the waters of the seventh 
chapter of Romans, which in the main de- 
scribes the row boat legalist, the conscientious 
church man struggling to serve God by ad- 
justing his inner nature to divine law. Of 
course this spiritual row boat is not really a 
salvation craft, that will come in the next 
chapter, but it may serve as a preliminary 
step in revealing the helplessness of legal 
religion, and bring us where we can get on 
board of a higher type of vessel which will 
carry us into regeneration. 

I. The row boat has in it an individuality^ 
and a wider range of action, and a variety of 
motion, which distinguish it from the tow- 
boat. When we board the row boat we leave 
the canal mule, the long hawser, the narrow 
canal banks, and locks, for a larger space of 
water, and a more independent action. This 
fact is beautifully carried out in the case of a 
soul that has been moved religiously only by 
some church ceremony or sacrament, or pulled 
along by some slow, plodding, ecclesiastical 
mule, when it begins to think for itself, and 
have an awakened individual conscience, and 
cuts loose from the narrow tyranny of tra- 
dition, and forms and exercises its own in- 
ward moral energies, and begins to seek after 



THE ROW BOAT CHRISTIAN. 2 J 

truth for itself, and read God^s Word for 
itself, to find out the way of life. It is the 
dawn of a supernatural day when a soul be- 
gins to realize its own private personal 
accountability to God, and to find out its 
individuality of conscience, and form deep 
silent purposes to serve God for itself and not 
for another. This is pictured in the little row 
boat, where the occupant plies the oar himself, 
and learns to adjust his muscle to the waves 
or the current, and to turn the craft at will, 
darting hither and thither across the river or 
harbor. When the great Daniel Webster was 
once questioned as to what he considered the 
greatest thought he had ever had, he replied 
it was his personal accountability to Almighty 
God. There are multitudes of machine made 
religionists, swayed only by outside authority, 
and like canal boats, pulled along by the rope 
of red tape ; but when any such get under 
conviction for real righteousness, there breaks 
forth an individuality of conscience, and per- 
sonal praying, and thinking, and striving for 
the right, and in sailor phrase *'they cut the 
shore line,'' and begin "paddling their own 
canoe.'' 

2. The row boat Christian, in contrast 
with the tow-boat, has the moving force on 



28 THE ROW BOAT CHRISTIAN. 

board within itself and not in some foreign 
creature. In this stage of our journey, the 
law has entered within the soul, and taken 
hold of the conscience, producing a sense of 
guilt for wrong doing, and aroused it to a 
sense of righteousness. While the person in 
this state does not knov/ the Holy Spirit, yet 
it is by God's Spirit, that the divine law is 
applied to the conscience, awakening a fear as 
to future destiny, and presenting powerful 
motives as to conduct, drawn from eternity. 
Up to this time most of the motives have been 
of an earthly and temporal consideration, but 
now eternal things are to be considered, and 
the motives to action are more powerful, and 
penetrate into the secret fountains of conduct. 
This operation of divine law begins to stir the 
will to an amendment of life, '*the ceasing to 
do evil, and the learning to do well." This 
action of the will toward righteousness cor- 
responds with the man in the row boat, who 
takes firm hold on the oars to propel the vessel 
in the right direction, though it be against 
wind and tide. In this state, where the inner 
faculties are aroused to religious obligations, 
and to earnest effort to quit sinning, and do 
good, there is opened up a whole list of relig- 
ious duties. The doing of these duties is not 



THK ROW BOAT CHRISTIAN. 29 

justification, or the new birth, but will prove 
a step in that direction, by showing the soul 
that great double truth, the necessity of right- 
eousness on the one hand, and its utter inability 
on the other hand to produce that righteous- 
ness. It is this twin truth of the soul's duty 
and the soul's helplessness, that makes it in 
the end throw down the oars ^of legal strug- 
gling, and get on board of the sail boat, which 
is a type of the regenerated state. The 
awakened conscience sees the duties of prayer, 
of obedience, of love, of forgiving others, of 
faith, of good works, of keeping the command- 
ments, but like the man in the seventh of 
Rom.ans, it knows not how to accomplish 
those duties, and thus like the oarsman, it 
rovvs hard againt the current of a sinful nature, 
and the strong winds of previous habits. I do 
not say that the soul in this row boat state 
sees the life of holiness of heart, for that will 
come later in its journey, but it sees the 
demands of righteousness. Holiness is the 
likeness of God in the heart, but righteousness 
refers to conduct, to the outflow of right moral 
principles in daily life. When men are first 
awakened they have not sufficient discernment 
to apprehend holiness of heart, because their 
knowledge is nearly all external, and they 



30 THE ROW BOAT CHRISTIAN. 

simply apprehend the outward actions of life, 
and the claims of God's law on outward con- 
duct. Not having the new birth, a tiresome 
struggle ensues, like the ardous rowing of a 
skiff across a swift river. 

3. The strength of the oarsman is brief, 
and quite limited, which shows that though 
the row boat state of religion is superior in 
many ways to the canal boat state, yet it is 
not adapted to a long voyage ; and fittingly 
represents that a truly awakened soul, after 
making a desperate pull to land itself in 
salvation, will soon have to quit its own 
righteousness, and give itself up to Jesus as 
the only Savior. If the oarsman should faint, 
or drop his oar over-board, or go to sleep, his 
navigation stops ; for there is no store house 
of energy in the little craft to keep up the 
motion, and everything depends upon the 
limited resources of human muscle and will. 
This exactly sets forth the limited strength of 
an awakened sinner to do right. The soul, 
when first awakened, thinks it can do wonders; 
it thinks it can break off its sins by signing a 
pledge, or by a stalwart determination, and 
practice the good with ease ; but in every in- 
stance this self conceited dream of our own 
strength is soon exploded, and like the disciples 



THE ROW BOAT CHRISTIAN. 3 1 

rowing against the storm in the daikness, we 
soon have to cry out, **Lord save I perish.'* 
Now if our trip on the row boat is so short 
and limited, of what use is it in our great 
spiritual voyage to take the row boat at all ? 
For the same reason that while the law does 
not save the soul, it is essential to arouse the 
conscience, reveal righteousness, and show us 
the necessity of a Savior, So the row boat 
state is essential to call forth individuality of 
conscience, the choice of right, the action of 
the will ; and by exhausting our energies at 
the oars, we will more gladly confess our 
nothingness, and lostness, and accept of a free 
passage on a stronger vessel, the sail boat, 
wafted by the winds of heaven, which now 
heaves in sight, with banners of free grace 
streaming from the masts, and a welcome call 
from the captain to all those in the row boats 
who are weary with struggling against their 
sins» to get on board for a voyage to the 
heavenly country. 



32 SAII. BOAT CHRISTIANS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Saii. Boat Christians. 

In our spiritual navigation we come now to 
trace out the comparison between the sail 
boat and those Christians who have got beyond 
being legally pulled along like the canal boat, 
or impelled by the oar, and have come into the 
consciousness of regeneration, being born from 
above by that Spirit which, like the wind, 
^'blow^eth where it listeth.'^ This analogy is 
not altogether imaginary, but based on a real 
likeness between the operations of the wind 
blowing on the sails of a vessel, impelling it 
onward, and the life-giving Holy Spirit that 
comes dov/n upon the faculties of a soul, vital- 
izing and inspiring the celestial movements of 
a holy life. The atmosphere is referred to all 
through the Scriptures as a type of the Holy 
Spirit, in fact the same word is used in the 
Greek Scripture to denote the wind, and both 
the human spirit and the Divine Spirit. In 
the case of the row boat, or the tow-boat, the 
force that produces the motion is human or 
mechanical, a fitting illustration of the manual 
labor and servitude of religious legality ; but 



SAII. BOAT CHRISTIANS. 33 

in the case of the sail boat, the power that 
produces the motion is above man's will, and 
infinitely superior to all earthly genius and 
mechanical devices, for the wind is one of the 
greatest forces in creation, and so utterly be- 
yond man's will power as to represent the 
mysterious energy of the Creator Himself. 
Hence, the sail boat, in contrast with the other 
classes mentioned, represents a soul that has 
come under the living energy of the Divine 
Breath, in its inner thoughts and feelings, as 
well as its outward moral and religious move- 
ments. In tracing the points of likeness 
between a vessel impelled by the wind, and a 
soul acting under the regenerating power of 
the Holy Spirit, let us notice the following : 

I. Whenever the Holy Spirit is in Scrip- 
ture compared to the wind, it is always in 
connection with giving life, or restoring life, 
and hence refers more directly to creation or 
regeneration, and not to the other offices of the 
Holy Spirit. There are several emblems of 
the Holy Spirit, such as fire, water, oil, and 
wind. But each emblem represents a specific 
office and work of the Holy Spirit. Water 
represents the Spirit in cleansing and nourish- 
ing — causing to grow. Fire represents the 
Spirit in a more intense degree of purging. 



34 SAII. BOAT CHRISTliVNS. 

penetrating, illuminating — energizing with ex- 
traordinary boldness and perseverance. Oil 
represents the Holy Spirit in a softening, melt- 
ing, endowing with gifts — lubricating the 
spiritual joints, bringing our latent talents for 
efficiency. Wind invariably is a type of the 
Spirit in giving life. ''And God breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
became a living soul.'' Gen. 2 : 7. ''Thou 
sendest forth thy Spirit and renewest the face 
of the earth.'' Psalm 104: 30. "The wind 
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the 
sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it com- 
eth or whither it goeth, so is every one that is 
born of the Spirit." John 3: 8. "Jesus 
breathed on them, and said unto them, receive 
ye the Holy Ghost ; whosesoever sins ye remit, 
they are remitted unto them." John 20: 22, 23. 
"Thus saith the Lord God, come from the 
four winds, O breath, and breathe on these 
slain, that they may live." Ezek. 37 : 9. 

In each one of these passages the Holy Spirit 
is compared to wind in the one special work of 
giving life, or restoring life, or remitting sins, 
and nowhere in Scripture is the Holy Spirit 
spoken of as a sanctifier under the emblem of 
wind, for on the day of Pentecost it was the 
noise of the descending tongues of fire that 



SAIL BOAT CHRISTIANS. 35 

sounded like the blowing wind ; but His opera- 
tions on that occasion were under the emblem 
of fire. Now inasmuch as a sail boat is one 
that is so constructed as to be impelled through 
the water by the blowing of the wind against 
its sails, it fitly sets forth the soul experienc- 
ing the new birth, and starting forth across 
the sea of life, under the life giving energy of 
the divine breeze of the Holy Spirit. It is a 
very happy transition to the hard toiling sailor, 
when he can take in the oar, and cease his 
arduous labor of rowing, and spread his sails, 
and let the mighty, tireless wind, waft him 
swiftly o'er the w^aters, which beautifully 
illustrates the tired soul, struggling to propel 
itself in a life of righteousness by the v/orks 
of the law, ceasing from its own works, and by 
simple faith yielding itself up to Jesus, to be 
wafted on by the breath of the Holy Spirit. 
As the transition from the row boat to the 
sail boat marks an epoch in navigation, so the 
transition from legal bondage to the joyous 
freedom of the new birth, marks an epoch in 
our lives ; and there are vSeveral things about 
both of these transitions which are just alike. 
In the row boat the force is entirely manual, 
but in the sail boat the force is in the air, 
which is one of the forces of God's energy in 



36 SAII, BOAT CHRISTIANS. 

creation. And so the man who is trying to 
serve God by the works of the law, is forcing 
himself by mere human strength to do his 
duty, but he who is born of the Spirit is under 
the impelling force of the Holy Ghost, and 
the motive power of his life has passed from 
the merely human, up into the currents of 
divine strength. Again in the row boat, the 
instrument of motion, the oar, is quite low, 
on a level with the boat ; but in the sail boat 
the motive force is from above, and thus the 
converted man has passed from the lower and 
fleshly forms of strength to the upper and 
heavenly energies of God's Spirit. Again in 
the row boat and tow-boat the agencies of 
motion, whether rope or oar, are visible to the 
e3^e, but in the sail boat the moving power is 
unseen, and though the wind can be felt, still 
because it is invisible yet so powerful, it re- 
sembles the unseen strength that produces a 
new life. The life of most professors of relig- 
ion, who are of the tow-boat and row boat 
class is mostly visible, and they are governed 
by visible and tangible things, but the soul 
born from above is governed by an unseen 
powder, even as sail boats are moved onward 
by the unseen wind. Again the mechanism 
and moving forces of the tow-boat and row 



SAII. BOAT CHRISTIANS. 37 

boat can be calculated by human science, 
weighed and measured by human skill and 
arithmatic, but the great currents of wind that 
move the sail vessels are incalcuable as to their 
height and magnitude, and though science has 
found out much about the wind, and its speed, 
yet there is forever and ever an unknown 
quantity, and a mysterious power, that 
stretches away beyond man's reason or im- 
agination, because it is under the immediate 
control of a higher power than man. In this 
respect it is true that of worldly church mem- 
bers, and those in legal bondage it can be 
pretty well estimated as to what they will do 
under certain conditions, and what motives 
will move them to action, and what physical, 
or social, or political, or ecclesiastical or fin- 
ancial forces are needed to move them hither 
or thither ; for their religion being earthl}'- and 
human, can be calculated upon ; but a soul 
born of the Holy Spirit, and is under the sway 
of the vast incalculable breath of God, has got 
beyond physical measurements, and the routine 
of human authority, and is in touch with a 
supernatural world which no science can esti- 
mate, and no philosophy fathom, and no 
human reason can foresee how such a soul 
will act in certain emergencies, because it is 



38 SAII. BOAT CHRISTIANS. 

now not being paddled b}^ a human hand, but 
impelled by breezes that blow out from the 
caverns of eternity. This is why popes, and 
priests, and church rulers, are always afraid 
of supernatural Holy Ghost experiences, be- 
cause they put the soul beyond the leading 
strings of a canal boat, and beyond the manip- 
ulation of a wooden oar, into the currents of 
that great divine atmosphere which is beyond 
their management. If all the tov^-boat and 
row boat church members in the world, should 
suddenl}^ become sail boat Christians, and 
catch the heavenly breezes, it would shatter to 
atoms all the priest-craft and church lordships 
on earth, for under the breezes of the Holy 
Spirit, they would be wafted out to sea, be- 
yond the reach of ecclesiastical red tape, and 
dead wooden mechanism. Again all the forces 
that move the tow-boat and the row boat are 
very limited as to quantity and strength, for 
the canal mule may give out, or the rope may 
break, or the oar may snap in a heavy sea, or 
the oarsman may faint or die, and all the 
strength, is only scanty and uncertain, but the 
circumambient air is practically unlimited, for 
no one knows how many miles it stretches up 
in the sky, and vv^e knov^ scientifically that it 
pervades every part of the earth and sea, and 



SAII. BOAT CHRISTIANS. 39 

as to its capacity of motion, it is beyond all 
imagination or the experiments of art. The 
recorded facts of the gigantic feats of cyclones 
and tornadoes, in lifting millions of tons of 
water, or playing fantastic tricks, such as 
driving a slender fence rail through a telegraph 
pole like a bullet through a shingle, or cutting 
the foundations from under a large house 
without disturbing a shingle on the roof, and 
other inconceivable performances, are familiar 
to all readers. Nov/ in this respect, all the 
forces of mere human or church religion, and 
the forces of legal servitude, are very limited 
and uncertain, and can soon be exhausted, 
and are liable to break down in any little 
storm, and utterly fail in the heavy breakers 
of death, or the surges of overw-helming dis- 
aster, l)Ut the sail boat Christian has cut loose 
from these earthly dependencies, and having 
been born of God, is in fellowship wnth spirit- 
ual motive forces absolutely unlimited in their 
nature, vastness, and duration. The seeming 
limitless forces of the atmosphere are a fitting 
comparison with the infinite and eternal 
strength of the Hob/ Spirit ; and all the won- 
derous performances of the w-ind on sea, or 
land, or driving clouds, or the delicate curling 
of the snow drift in the north, or the marvel- 



40 SAII, BOAT CHRISTIANS. 

ous twistings and chasings of sand dunes on 
the desert, are as nothing compared with the 
powerful, delicate, and beautiful feats which 
the Holy Spirit accomplishes in the lives of 
those who come under His matchless power. 
Thus from the row boat to the sail boat, and 
from the legalist to the regenerated state, 
there is a transition from the human to the 
divine, from the lower to the higher, from the 
seen to the unseen, from the calculable to the 
incalculable, and from the limited to the 
unlimited motive forces of Spirit life. 

2. lyCt us now consider that the sail vessel 
must be constructed in such a way as to be 
adapted to the wind, as well as to the water. 
It must have masts, and sails, and ropes, and 
such devices of convenience for catching the 
breezes, as to make it practicable. This will 
serve to illustrate that the soul which comes 
to God in reconciliation through Christ, and 
is born of the Holy Spirit, must be adjusted 
to God's will and word, in such a spirit of 
obedience, as to form a vital co-partnership 
with the Holy Spirit, that it can be taken hold 
of by divine grace, and impelled onward in a 
life of service. Let the mast represent the 
principle of obedience, upon which everything 
depends in sailing ; let the sail represent faith, 



SAII. BOAT CHRISTIANS. 4I 

which is opened to receive the motions of the 
Holy Spirit through Jesus ; let the ropes rep- 
resent prayer, by which faith is hoisted and 

expanded to catch the divine breath ; let the 

rudder represent the conscience informed by 

truth to guide the conduct ; let the compass 

represent the Vv^ord of God, which marks out 

the direction of navigation. A real Christian 
who is truly born of God, has a real positive 

spiritual union of life with the Lord God, and 
although that union is more or less hindered 
by the carnal dispositions of the heart until 
they are purged away by the work of sancti- 
fication, yet nevertheless every principle of 
Christian life and experience is set agoing in 
regeneration. The various faculties of the 
soul must be yielded up to God, and so adjusted 

to His will, like the sailing apparatus, so that 
the breezes of the Holy Spirit can take hold 
upon them, and propel them in ways of right- 
eousness. It is impossible for man in his own 
natural strength to do anything that will 
please God, and it is only when God Himself 
begins to w^ork in us by His Spirit, and we 
begin to correspond with the divine touches, 
that we can render any service acceptable to 
God. 

''What are our works but sin and death, 
Till Thou the quickening Spirit breathe." 



42 SAII. BOAT CHRISTIANS. 

The reason is, all our works apart from God's 
grace, are filled with self-righteousness, self 
dependence, pride, unbelief, and other sinful 
tempers of our fallen state, and nothibg can 
please God except that which is directly or 
indirectly from Himself. Thus the sail boat 
Christian is one who receives and co-operates 
with divine grace, and by the ropes of prayer, 
he lifts and unfolds the sails of faith, to receive 
the moving energy of the divine breath, and 
nothing pleases God more than a wide open 
faith to receive the generosity of His pro- 
visions of mercy, for without faith it is 
impossible to please Him. 

3. In the smaller and lower order of sail 
boats, such as the canoe, skiff, small sloop, 
and other small sail craft, there is generally 
the combination of construction for using both 
the sail or the oar according to emergency, 
but such small vessels are not formidable, and 
do not rank as very strong or useful craft. 
Even this feature has its counterpart in a class 
of Christians of a weak and uncertain faith, 
who seem to be a combination of the legalist 
and the truly regenerated. At one time they 
stretch their sails of faith, and move along 
under the Spirit's motion with ease and beauty, 
but in a storm they cannot endure or corre- 



SAII, BOAT CHRISTIANS. 45 

spond with the great power of God, and in a 
dead calm they cannot afford to wait on the 
Lord, and so taking in their sails, either from 
too much wind or too little, they drop back 
into the row boat class, and ply the oars of 
hard manual labor, depending on their own 
efforts to serve God. Thus these small craft 
which are made partly for sailing and partly 
for rowing, fitly typify weak and unestablished 
believers, who though they are born of God, 
and at times are distinctly wrought upon by 
the Holy Spirit, yet being feeble in spiritual 
strength, in times of discouragement, or when 
their spiritual feelings subside into a calm, 
they get into bondage of legal works, and by 
various devices of what looks like good works, 
they depend on their will power to carry them 
forward. Some of this class get in bondage 
to scruples, and stumble over little nonsensical 
trifles in eating, or drinking, or apparel, or 
mannerism. Sometimes they are switched off 
on keeping the Jewish Sabbath, or some form 
of legalism, supposing it is a mark of extra 
holiness, and thus with the sails of faith either 
folded or idly flapping against the mast, they 
labor at the oars, supposing religious sweat is 
their salvation. Notwithstanding these spells 
of legal bondage, if they retain their sails, and 



44 SAIL BOAT CHRISTIANS. 

get adjusted to the Holy Spirit, they may 
some day put out to sea, and get into the trade 
winds of spiritual life where every trace of 
legality will be lost. 

4. Before we consider the sail ship Chris- 
tian, or the established life in the new birth, 
there is one more point to be considered in 
connection with the smaller kind of sail boat 
Christians, and that is, in their navigation, as 
a rule they keep close to the land, sailing in 
rivers, creeks, bays, and along the coast ; and 
steering by objects on shoie — light-houses, 
and such objects. We must remember that in 
the regenerate state, all believers are not equal 
in strength, or vital energy, or faith, or faith- 
fulness of life. Among converted souls who 
are not fully sanctified, there is about as great 
a variety as there is among different sail ves- 
sels, from the little skiff that darts across the 
river, up to the stately, full-fledged sail ship 
that plows the ocean for weeks and months out 
of sight of land. So there are Christians truly 
regenerated, who are conservative, or timid, 
or lacking in mental or spiritual capacity, or 
on account of environment, or education, nev- 
er get out on the high seas of brave spiritual 
navigation, but spend their lives in the shal- 
lows of land-locked bodies of water, or along 



SAII. BOAT CHRISTIANS. 45 

coast lines, where they can easily put into 
harbor, and screen themselves behind some 
ecclesiastical or social protection, and never 
know those terrific storms that other Chris- 
tians have to endure who go clear over the sea 
with God. As these coast line, or river sail 
boats are steered by objects on the shore, so 
these Christians, instead of getting their eye 
entirely on God's word as the compass, they 
are largely guided by other persons, by pre- 
cedents and opinions, or traditions, and by 
rules and regulations of sectarian legislation. 
Thus they steer their lives partly by persons, 
or notions, or customs, outside the Bible, and 
on the coast shores of time and sense. 

Again, it often happens that small sail boats, 
by being close under the bluffs or shore line, 
fail to catch the wind which is sweeping along 
beautifully out in deep water, and in this re- 
spect many a feeble Christian who is sailing 
along under the high bluffs of some church 
steeple, or social mountain, or shore of human 
influence, is becalmed, and his sails flap idly 
against the mast ; whereas, if he were leagues 
away out to sea, he would catch the sweet 
gales of the free Spirit of God, and make rapid 
headway in spiritual things. But usually 
their weaknesses and mixedness is due to 



46 SAIL BOAT CHRISTIANS. 

Steering partly by the compass and partly by 
objects on shore. Still, let us thank God that 
they have sails, that is real saving faith, and 
have come under the converting power of the 
Holy Spirit, and that they consult the Bible 
compass if only to a limited extent, and we 
pray that they may become large crafts, and 
**go into the deep, and do business in great 
waters. ' ' 



SAIL SHIP CHRISTIANS. 47 



CHAPTER V. 

Sail Ship Christians. 

Many years ago, on a retired, quiet farm 
in the hills of New England, there lived a 
lonely old couple, who used to often weep 
in their solitude, and wonder why it was 
that their three sons should all have left 
them in their early manhood, and gone far 
away on the ocean, and chosen to be sailors. 
It was a problem especially sore to the old 
mother's heart, and one that she had tried 
to reason out a thousand times. One day 
a godly, intelligent minister was visiting 
that home, and the aged mother was speak- 
ing to him of that old problem, why all of 
her sons should have taken to a sea-faring 
life. The minister looked up on the wall 
and saw hanging there a large picture in 
bright colors, of a magnificent sail ship, with 
the canvas all spread, plowing its way 
gracefully through the bounding white- 
crested v/aves. Turning to the old lady, he 
said: ''There hangs the solution to your 
problem, as to why your boys became sail- 
ors." From their childhood they were ac- 



48 SAII, SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

customed to gaze on the picture of that 
beautiful ship, and their young imagina- 
tions leaped over the narrow boundaries of 
your quiet farm, and went soaring away 
with that ship across the mighty deep, and 
in fancy they walked the deck of that ves- 
sel, and spread those white sails, and pulled 
away on those ropes, and gazed o'er those 
blue waves, and visited many a foreign port, 
and heard the clatter of strange languages 
in other climes, until there was formed 
within them the passion for travel, and then 
came the fixed purpose to go out in the 
world, and from that time the walls of your 
humble home were too narrow, and the 
fence around your little farm v/as too low, 
to keep in their bounding desire to sail the 
v/ide seas." 

Who can tell the power of pictures on a 
young imagination for woe or weal? The 
outward picture through the eye awakens 
an artist in the mind and heart, which, when 
aroused goes on duplicating, recombining, 
and making pictures of its own, more vivid 
and powerful than the outward picture 
which first awakened the dormant fancy. 
We cannot calculate what the effects would 
be, if we could have had from childhood, 



SAII, SHIP CHRISTIANS. 49 

correct pictures of Bible history, of the 
biography of prophets, and angels, and of 
Jesus, or pictures of things to come, of hell, 
and Paradise, and the resurrection, and the 
reign of Christ on the earth, when the lion 
and lamb will play together on the meadows, 
and the earth filled with righteousness as 
waters cover the sea. God knows best, and 
the pictures of the Bible are painted for the 

eye of faith. It is a life of faith we are trav- 
eling, and let us, like those young lads from 

the hills of New England, bid farewell to 
terrestrial things, and take a large sail ship 
for a distant port in some sunny bay, in a 
far-away land. 

In the previous chapter we took up the 
analogy of the sail boat as in a general way 
a type of the regenerated life, marking es- 
pecially the transitions from legal works to 

a life in-breathed and wafted on by the 
breath of heaven. But there are many de- 
grees of experience in a justified state before 
the believer enters the great life of sanctifi- 
cation. The sailship sets forth the very 
best mode of ocean travel before steamships 
were invented. So let us look at the justi- 
fied state in its highest and strongest mani- 
festation, previous to the inner work of 
heart purity. 



50 SAII. SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

I. The sail ship goes out on the ocean far 
beyond the sight of land, where its steering 
can no longer be guided by light houses, or 
lightships, or promontories, or any land sig- 
nals; but only by the compass, and the 
heavenly bodies of sun, moon and stars. In 
like manner the believer who is fully estab- 
lished in justifying faith, finds he cannot 
rely for his spiritual guidance in faith, or 
experience, or practice, upon those religious 
sights and sounds and forms of fleshly wis- 
dom, or mere church traditions, which are 
like headlands and lighthouses, that serve 
their purpose as dependences for the infant 
believer. In steering a sail ship, there must 
be one or more good compasses on board, 
perfectly adjusted to the loadstone center of 
the earth, which is not at the North Pole, as 
many imagine, but several points from it. 
But the compass must be so adjusted to this 
magnetic center, as to furnish the sailor a 
practically infallible guidance. This com- 
pass to the believer is the Holy Bible, ver- 
bally inspired, in perfect adjustment with 
the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is all the 
fullness of the Godhead bodily. The wel- 
fare of the ship out at sea, depends on the 
perfect agreement of two magnets ; the one 



SAII. SHIP CHRISTIANS. 5 1 

is that enormous unexplored magnet inside 
the earth near the North Pole, and the other 
is the little magnet which swings with beau- 
tiful equipoise in its little box before the eye 
of the helmsman at the wheel. This same 
thing is exactly true of the safety of a be- 
lieving soul, depending on the infallible har- 
mony between the two great words of God, 
one is the eternal outspoken Word, from the 
bosom of the Father, that eternal Personal 
Word, who was in the beginning with God, 
and who was God, and apart from whom the 
Father never did and never will make any 
utterance, and who like the great magnet 
in the earth, is hidden in the unexplored 
depths of the Father, and is the magnet of 
all creation; and the other word is that 
which is written by inspired Prophets and 
Apostles, and constitutes the true compass 
for the believer in his spiritual navigation. 
As the compass points to the polar load- 
stone, so all scripture points to the Anointed 
Son of the Father. 

Now, in our sail ship we must look well to 
this compass, and study its points, and get 
our eyes away from feelings, and whims, 
and religious demonstrations, and the influ- 
ence of mere numbers, and creature sur- 



52 SAII, SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

roundings, that used to guide us in our first 
conversion, and while we coasted near the 
land in the shallow waters of childhood 
grace. Another thing that a sail ship must 
have for its guidance at sea, is a knowledge 
of the heavenly bodies, the polar star, the 
Southern Cross, the planets, the great fixed 
stars, the variations of the moon, and know- 
ing how to use the quadrant for solar ob- 
servations. These celestial bodies may fitly 
represent those radiant holy characters, 
wrought out by Divine grace in past gener- 
ations, and hung up in the sky of scripture, 
biography, and religious history, as single 
fixed stars, or whole milkyways of supernat- 
ural instruction. The Holy Spirit points us 
to Abraham as a star of faith ; to Job, as a 
star of patience; to David, as a star of 
immense hearted love; to Paul, as a star 
pf quenchless zeal, and to a whole blue sky 
full of others, and bids us take them as ex- 
amples of prevailing prayer, as in the case 
of Elijah, or of faith, or of humility. So, 
while our sails are spread to the breeze and 
the ocean foams at the prow of our ship, 
cutting its way through the yielding waves 
of the passing days, let us get familiar with 
this galaxy of heavenly souls and gather 



SAII. SHIP CHRISTIANS. 53 

many a lesson as to our spiritual latitude 
and longitude, for if our voyage is a suc- 
cessful one, we must learn and live over 
again the pure principles that made those 
shining saints v^hat they were. Another 
thing a sail ship must have for its guidance 
at sea is a good log. This log is a little in- 
strument so constructed in the form of a 
spiral wheel, that when it is thrown over- 
board and tied fast to the ship, by its revo- 
lutions on being drawn through the water, 
it will register the speed of the vessel, so 
that the captain can tell just how many 
miles or knots the ship travels in an hour. 
This log fitly represents the spiritual mech- 
anism of our conscience, and the inward 
knowledge we have of our moral condition, 
and the progress we are making in prayer, 
in loving our enemies, in humility, in pa- 
tience, and in gaining victories over difficul- 
ties. Thus the sail ship has a trinity of 
guidances out at sea, the compass, the heav- 
enly bodies, and the log, and a fully justi- 
fied believer has the three corresponding 
guidances, the word of God, the example of 
the saints, and the inward consciousness of 
the Holy Spirit, acting upon his heart and 
judgment. 



54 SAII, SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

2. The sail ship is especially constructed 
for deep water and long voyages, to be 
months at sea, and for the enduring of 
storms and the heavy shocks of breaking 
waves. It is true that the sail ship is not 
able to endure as much as a great modern 
steel steamship, but up to the amount of 
knowledge that ship-builders had before 
iron steamers were in vogue, these sail ships 
were the best possible of their kind. And 
so we are not considering as yet the strong- 
est types of spiritual character, but the very 
best types of Christians who have not en- 
tered the condition of full sanctification. 
And like the gallant ocean clippers back 
yonder in the middle of the last century, the 
established justified believer is constructed 
for depth of draught in prayer and thought, 
and for a long voyage, without a thought of 
turning back, and has a purpose firmly set, 
to endure all trials, to encounter all storms 
or calms, to bear any vicissitude of the voy- 
age, that it may gain the port of heaven. 

3. The sail ship, under full canvas far 
off on the sea, is a thing of beauty, and 
moves with charming grandeur over the 
deep. One of these great vessels can never 
be seen to full advantage in a narrow river. 



SAIL SHIP CHRISTIANS. 55 

or lying at the wharf, or in a pent up harbor. 
Its proper home is on the high seas and its 
playground the broad fields of liquid blue. 
When every sail is set under a stiff breeze 
and the sea is freshened with white-caps on 
the waves, and the spars swing and creak 
under the bending canvas, and the ship 
gently plunges through the brine like a big 
plough through a rolling prairie, and the 
jolly sailors sing at their tasks, that is the 
glory period of a sail ship's career, and seen 
under such circumstances it impresses the 
eye as a huge living creature, far more fas- 
cinating than an iron steamship low lying in 
the water, with only a trail of black smoke 
floating over its track. How few people on 
earth have e37^es to see the real grandeur of a 
Christian life that has launched out on a 
pilgrimage to a heavenly port. Like the 
sail ship, such a Christian is seen to his best 
advantage far out at sea, away from the nar- 
row notions of men, or pent up policies of 
society, and the shallow waters of fleshly 
considerations. Out on the deep of God's 
providences, with every sail of faith catch- 
ing the breath of the Holy Spirit, with every 
rope of prayer stretched in service, with 
every mast and spar gently bending in obe- 



56 SAII. SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

dience to duty, the believer who may not be 
conscious of anything except the fact that 
he is pressing onward, presents to the eyes 
of angels, and to true spiritual discernment, 
an object of spiritual grandeur kindred to 
the sublimity of a full-fledged ship at sea. 
We must, however, draw the picture true to 
fact. In order to do this we shall have to 
consider some of the defects and limitations 
of the sail ship in contrast with the steamer, 
and these will illustrate very strikingly the 
limitations of the believer, at his very best 
estate, in the merely justified experience, as 
contrasted with the sanctified believer, im- 
pelled onward by the hidden baptism of 
fire. One of these defects is the very item 
last mentioned that the sail ship cuts a mag- 
nificent figure in the eye of the natural man, 
out of proportion to its real strength. In 
other words, the tall masts, the white sails, 
the graceful form, the multiplied ropes and 
spars, form a graceful picture, surpassing 
the steamship, but a picture out of propor- 
tion to its capacity in other directions. Now 
it is a singular fact that the strong, justified 
believer previous to his sanctification, cuts a 
much more handsome figure in the eye of 
the natural man, than a fully sanctified be- 



SAII. SHIP CHRISTIANS. 57 

liever does of the same rank in life and so- 
ciety. The believer not fully sanctified still 
lives a mixed life, and every part of his ex- 
perience and practice admits of a mixedness 
of the things of nature, and this mixedness 
of grace and nature, of the heavenly with 
the earthly, of the Holy Spirit with human 

philosophy of the Christ life with the self- 
life, is always more pleasing to human per- 
ception and reason than to be purely spirit- 
ual and unmixed. I have known scores of 

instances where ministers and Christians 
were exceedingly popular with their 

churches and lauded as paragons of relig- 
ious loveliness, while they had a good deal 
of the spread eagle of self mixed in with 
their piety, but who were in the language 
of the Prophet, frowned upon as ''speckled 
birds'' when they were purified from the 
carnal mind. Have you never noticed that 
the beautiful, sky-scraping, science delving, 
passion and poetry sermons of our unsanc- 
tified preacher, who mixes grace and nature, 
will call forth cloudbursts of applause, but 
v/hen the same preacher got sanctified and 
poured forth a cataract of pure Bible truth 
unmixed with hifalluten and fleshly elo- 
quence, the people at once thought the man 
had lost his ability and power. It was only 



58 SAIL SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

because the magnificent sail ship had gone 
out of service and the steamship had taken 
its place. 

Again the sail ship involves so much com- 
plicated labor. There are so many ropes, 
and masts, and spars, and so much manual 
labor, which cannot be done by machinery, 
and a great liability for the rigging to get 
tangled and torn in a storm. This is true of 
the best estate of a Christian life previous 
to its perfection in love. There is the min- 
gling of so much human reason, and relig- 
ious struggle, and so much liability for rent 
feelings, and torn tempers, and broken obe- 
dience, that it renders the voyage many 
backsets and defeats. Again, the sail ship 
has to tack and beat its way up against the 
current of headv/inds. It can seldom steer 
very long in a straightforward direction, but 

must change the sails to every direction and 
intensity of the wind. Thus the unsacti- 

fied believer can seldom pursue his course 

very long without having to vary his inward 

feelings, and views, and outward conduct, 
by the currents that beat against him. 
There is a lack of fixed, abiding, tranquil, 
ongoing movement in his life. This tack- 
ing of a sail ship against a head wind neces- 
sitates complex cyphering to find from the 



SAII, SHIP CHRISTIANS. 59 

log what Speed the ship is making. What 
school boy has not heard of the dreadful 
bother in working a problem in logarithms? 

Well, this one of its meanings, to consult 
the log of a ship that sails for instance ten 
miles south, and twenty miles east, and 
twenty miles south, and ten miles south- 
east, and so on, for a day and night, to make 
the calculation of the zig-zag course, and 
find how many miles the ship has traveled 
in a straight line. There is something like 

this that puzzles the wit of a sail ship Chris- 
tian, and he has much difficulty in striking 

the line of real growth in grace. Again, the 
sail ship is liable to be dismasted and cap- 
sized in a heavy gale, or to lie helpless in a 
dead calm, which fitly represents the imper- 
fections of the unsanctified believer, whose 
very tallness and show in a mired, moral 
state, renders him a likely prey to cyclones 
of temptation, or a helpless victim to dead 

calms in religious experience, where his soul 
is at a standstill. So that notwithstanding 

all the advantages of the sail boat and the 
sail ship state of grace over the lower legal 
forms of religion, it yet has many limita- 
tions and hindrances, which will be done 
away with when we board the steamboat 
and take a higher mode of navigation. 



6o STJ^AMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Steamboat Christians. 

There is a pathetic poetry that hangs Hke 
a silvery mist around our youthful years, 
and as we advance on in life, little things 
that occurred in our early experience, take 
on through memories soft, light, large and 
glowing forms, like the huge red appear- 
ance of the sun or moon when they hang 
low on the horizon. This accounts largely 
for that style of conversation which glori- 
fies the most common place events and 
things in the distant past, to the disparage- 
ment of much better things that are in the 
present. An instance of this kind can be 
found by mingling with old sailors on a 
steamship, who spent their early years in a 
sail vessel, and hear them speak in the most 
glowing terms of the grand old times when 
sail ships had the first place on the sea ; and 
in contrast, speak with abusive reproach of 
modern steamships, as ugly iron tubs. In 
the several sea voyages I have taken, I have 
been amused to hear both officers and sail- 
ors speak in this manner, lauding the sail 



STEAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 6l 

ships of the past in contrast with the iron 
steamers of the present. This is to be ac- 
counted for, partly by the principle above 
referred to, of the poetry that envelopes our 
first experiences, and partly by the ignorant 
prejudice in the human mind against pro- 
gress, and a clinging to old things and cus- 
toms simply because they are old; and 
partly by that wretched depravity in the 
human heart, which finds a grim comfort in 
grumbling at things in general, and es- 
pecially at the developments of a genius or 
wisdom that surpasses our own. Now, 
strange to say, we find all these character- 
istics manifested in religious matters as we 
push on in our spiritual navigation, and 
come to change our mode of travel from the 
sail ship to the steamboat type of life. As 
on the deck of most any ship, you will find 
an old tar ready to find fault with the steam- 
ship, and loud in his praises of those good 
old days when he was a lad furling the sails 
of a clipper merchantman, so in every 
church you may find some plodding profes- 
sor of religion who grumbles profusely at 
everything connected with sanctification, 
with the preaching of holiness, or the bap- 
tism of the Spirit, or the life of perfect trust. 



62 STKAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 

or divine healing, or the glorious return of 
our dear Lord to conquer and reign on 
earth, or the demands for foreign missions, 
or the singing of full salvation songs, or the 
holding of special conventions for the deep- 
ening of the spiritual life, speaking dispar- 
ageingly of all these modern steps in relig- 
ion, and constantly praising those good old 
times when people knew nothing particu- 
larly about the Holy Ghost, when they used 
to have occasional revivals which never in- 
terfered with the use of tobacco, or the 
drinking of a little toddy, or the sweet priv- 
ilege of getting angry and giving the offend- 
ing party a piece of your tongue. In fact, 
multitudes who are well nigh frenzied with 
modern progress in material and commer- 
cial things, turn out to be the most ignorant 
and stolid objectors to all progress in spir- 
itual religion. Long centuries ago God 
spake unto Moses, saying, ''Speak unto the 
children of Israel that they go forward." 
That command is still running on through 
the present moment, and so in order to in- 
crease our speed in our journey and avoid 
the deluge of calms and headwinds, we 
must leave the sail ship type of life and get 
on board of the steamer. Just as the wind 



STKAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 63 

is a type of the Holy Spirit in the grace of 
regeneration, so fire and water are scripture 
types of the Holy Spirit in purifying and 
empowering the soul in the sanctified life. 

I. We must remember that a steamboat 
is not simply a development or an evolution 
out of a sail boat, which clearly symbolizes 
that the grace of sanctification is not an out- 
growth, or an evolution of pardon, or the 
new birth. While the sail boat and the 
steamer are both vessels for travel and com- 
merce, and of the same outward form, with 
the same general features, and for the same 
uses, yet in their interior structure, and in 
their moving power and in their capacity of 
there are great differences. In a like way 
there are similarities in outward life, and 
law, and service, between the justified and 
sanctified state, but as to the inner forms of 
motive, and force, and capacity, there is con- 
siderable difference. The steamboat is a 
creation, a product of invention, of manu- 
facture, and not a happening of chance, or a 
result of growth. There is a peculiar fasci- 
nation in many minds for the theory of 
gradual, slow and everlasting development, 
as applied to everybody and everything in 
heaven and earth, visible and invisible, but 



64 STEAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 

this fascination is largely due to that cor- 
ruption in the human mind which loves to 
believe what is false. The natural man 
loves a lie, especially when the lie accom- 
modates his selfish interests. The theory 
of evolution is Satan's rain-bow charm 
which he has hung over the colleges and the 
pulpits of these last days, because it does 
away with the supernatural, and the instan- 
taneous in salvation, and in Christ's blood, 
and in the action of the Holy Ghost, and ac- 
commodates all the natural sinful propensi- 
ties of the human mind. Evolution glori- 
fies nature and denies Christ, magnifies cul- 
ture and despises the blood of Jesus, wor- 
ships human thought and blasphemes the 
Holy Spirit, prates loudly of holy living but 
utterly denies the Divine Creation of holi- 
ness of heart out of which the life must 
flow. Just as the steamboat cannot evolve 
itself from a sail ship, no more can a Chris- 
tian evolve a state of pure love, of perfect 
victory over sin and self, out of a state of 
mixedness of moral character from the nat- 
ural roots of bitterness in his heart. The 
steamboat must be specially constructed for 
a specific end, and every part of its machin- 
ery adjusted in harmony with each other, 



STEAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 65 

and with the sea, and the elements, and the 
work to be accompHshed. So the blessed 
structure of a soul in holy love must be 
under the direct power of the omnipotent 
Saviour, and He who originally formed the 
soul must cleanse it, and impart the hidden, 
swift and delicate mechanism of motives, 
intentions, prayers, desires and zeal, which 
are dapted to the production of a humble, 
blameless and useful life. Also, as the ma- 
chinery and motive power in a steamboat 
must be adjusted to the sea, and storms, and 
tides, so must the sanctified believer have in 
him by the gift of the Holy Spirit, a type of 
spiritual life adjusted to meet all difficulties, 
and overcome opposing forces, and trium- 
phantly cross the ocean, accomplish its mis- 
sion, and land its cargo in the port of 
heaven. In the transition from the sail to 
the steamboat, the iron shaft that moves the 
wheels takes the place of the masts, which 
represents the spirit of obedience in the soul; 
and the wheels take the place of the sails, 
which represent faith, and the chains and 
iron rods on the steamer take the place of 
ropes on the sail ships, which represent the 
earnest prayers of a consecrated believer. 
Thus all the parts of a sail ship are perpetu- 



66 STKAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 

ated In the steamer in a different form, and 
so all the parts and principles of a justified 
believer are carried forward in the sancti- 
fied state, in deeper and stronger forms. 

2. Let us now consider the peculiar 
kind of power that propells the steamboat, 
in contrast with the form of force that im- 
pelled the sail ships. It is the same Saviour 
and the same Holy Spirit that works in the 
believer in a life of pure love, as wrought in 
him in a feebler and more mixed religious 
life before; but divine power in the higher 
state is acting in a different degree, and 
hence is set forth under a different type. It 
is the union of fire and water that produces 
steam, which is one of the greatest forces 
known in the material world. 

We had occasion in a previous chapter to 
expatiate on the enormous and incalculable 
forces of the air, but now we have to con- 
sider other kinds of energy still more amaz- 
ing in their results. The power of water in 
running machinery has been known and 
utilized from the earliest generations, and 
the force of water in a rushing current, or a 
falling weight, is beyond ordinary imagina- 
tion. The falling of a great wave in a storm 
at sea on the deck of a ship, has been so 



STKAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 67 

powerful as to sweep away wheel-house, 
and masts, and seamen, overboard. The 
force of water rushing over the falls of Ni- 
agara is sufficient, if it could be utilized in 
every part, to run the machinery of a nation 
and accomplish the work of hundreds of 
thousands of horses and men. But what 
shall be said of the power of fire, that amaz- 
ing energy stored up in the heat of the sun, 
and that manifests itself in the lightning 
bolt, the electric current, and that unmeas- 
ured ocean of summer heat, that causes 
every living plant to grow, and that is inces- 
santly lifting millions of tons of water in the 
form of evaporation from the surface of seas 
and lakes and rivers. Now, only think of 
the union of these giant forces, of water and 
fire, in the production of steam. The 
power of steam was never utilized for me- 
chanical purposes till about the middle of 
the nineteenth century, and in the space of 
fifty years it has been so harnessed and set 
to work as to accomplish more than all the 
hundreds of millions of men on earth could 
have accomplished in a century. The power 
that lifted the top of Mt. Pelee thousands of 
feet in the air, and carried it in the ocean, 
burning up a city with forty thousand pop- 



68 STEAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 

ulation, was the power of steam generated 
by the water emptying down and coming in 
contact with the hidden fire under the moun- 
tain. This is the power that moves the 
steamship, the type of the sanctified be- 
liever. Is it not singular that the power of 
God filling the believer on the day of Pen- 
tecost should correspond precisely with the 
energy of steam. The scriptures do not say 
that the wind was in motion in the upper 
room, but that "there came a sound from 
heaven like the sound of a rushing mighty 
wind,'' and the ''sound" filled the house. 
There may have been a downward rush of 
air, but the word says it was the sound like 
a wind, and this sound was produced by the 
descent of fiery tongues, which, like a 
shower of rockets, came roaring from 
heaven and lighted on the heads of about a 
hundred and twenty praying Christians. 
Then, we are told, they were all filled with 
the Holy Ghost. This word "filled" should 
be more properly rendered "overflowed." 
The idea is that of a river in a freshet over- 
flowing its banks, or of a water vessel being 
filled and overflowing, which clearly sets 
forth the Holy Spirit under the type of 
water. Thus the Holy Spirit came on them 



STEAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 69 

as a fire, and filled them to overflowing like 
water, and they at once, under the power of 
divine steam, the product of heavenly fire 
and water, began to speak, and rejoice aloud 
and move out of the room, and down in the 
open streets, pouring forth on the aston- 
ished multitude celestial shot and shell, and 
hot streams of testimony, and reproof, and 
exhortation, like liquid lava from the craters 
of a hundred volcanoes. 

The miracles wrought in commerce by 
steam in the past fifty years, have their 
counterpart in the religious miracles that 
have been wrought by the Holy Ghost, in 
the great revival of scriptural holiness dur- 
ing the same time. If you have ever made 
a special study of God's providences, both 
in the church and in the world, you doubt- 
less have been startled with the coincident 
movements of things in the spiritual and 
material departments. All down through 
history every invention of science, every 
great discovery, has occurred about simul- 
taneously with some great religious awak- 
ening, or some struggle for national liberty, 
or freedom of conscience. This was true at 
the discovery of gun powder, of the mari- 
ner's compass, of the art of printing, of the 



70 STEAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 

discovery of America, which occurred about 
the time of Luther's reformation, and the 
discovery of steam power soon after the 
great Wesleyan revival in England, and 
just about the time foreign missionaries be- 
gan to go to the heathen, as if the steamship 
and the missionary to go on it should be 
twin born; and a little later came the tele- 
graph, and the utilizing of electricity, just 
about the time of the starting of the great 
holiness movement, that designed of God to 
prepare a chosen people for the coming of 
the Lord. What can be more helpless than 
a steam engine without fire or water, and 
before the day of Pentecost the timid Apos- 
tles went quietly to their place of daily 
prayer, with enough grace to keep them 
from sinning and in the path of obscure obe- 
dience, but perhaps the laughing stocks of 
the proud rulers who had killed their Lead- 
er, and now looked upon them as poor, weak 
fanatics, that could never disturb the slum- 
bering grandeur of ecclesiastical tyranny 
any more. But when these weak men were 
filled with divine steam, they became like 
giant locomotives, rushing with irresistible 
might through a crowded city, shaking the 
very earth, a terror to their foes, and draw- 



STEAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 7 1 

ing a long train of consequences after them. 
In order to accomplish the work of Christ 
in the earth, we not only need all the natural 
faculties and gifts belonging to the soul by 
virtue of our creation, and we not only need 
to have our sins washed away, and the con- 
science made pure, but we need to be taken 
into perfect union with the Lord Jesus and 
filled with the person of the Holy Ghost and 
endowed with the same courage, love, hu- 
mility, perseverance, impartiality, and the 
same fearless charity that was in Christ. 
We marvel at the hidden force in steam 
that drives a ship large enough to be an iron 
city, with thousands of tons and thousands 
of passengers, through the Avaves of the sea 
at twenty-five miles an hour; and yet that 
amazing power is feeble in comparison with 
that divine steam, the double gift of Pente- 
cost, of water and fire, that hides in perfect 
believers, and drives them on in self-abne- 
gations, through poverty, scorn, proscrip- 
tion, isolation, loveliness, prisons, flames, 
ostracism, temptation, weakness of body, 
perplexity of mind; always cleaving to 
Jesus, always choosing holy sorrow to sin- 
ful pleasure, always praying, always hoping, 
and in every storm keeping their prows to- 



72 STEAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 

ward the harbor of the New Jerusalem. 
These souls are the true ships, and freighted 
with cargoes of heavenly gold. 

3. Another contrast between the sail 
boat and the steamer is, that the motive 
power is so much more hidden in the latter 
than in the former. The sails on a ship are 
much more taking to the natural eye than 
the hidden force of steam down in the body 
of the ship, and so there is something in the 
mixed life of an unsanctified Christian, in 
those displays of the self-life, far more cap- 
tivating to the natural mind, than the deep 
secret energy of a soul that is crucified with 
Jesus, and that seeks in all things not to dis- 
play self, but to bear fruit unto God. A 
person who should see a steamboat in mo- 
tion, but having no knowledge of the hidden 
apparatus in the engine room, would be 
puzzled to even imagine what could make 
it go. In the same way, people who know 
nothing of the life hid with Christ, and the 
secret power of the Lord, cannot imagine 
what strength it is that pushes onward a 
few unearthly and unaccountable people, 
right against what the world considers the 
very best and wisest things. 

It is amusing to read what the newspa- 



STEAMBOAT CHRISTIANS. 73 

pers say, and the accounts of unsaved 
church members give, of persons who are 
filled with the Holy Spirit. They speak of 
them as being "magnetic,'' or "hysterical," 
or "eloquent," or "insane," or "cranky," and 
oftentimes use descriptive terms of such 
persons that are opposite and contradictory, 
because they are only guessing out of their 
carnal wit, at the character of a spiritual 
force beyond their range, and have no more 
knowledge of these spiritual ships that are 
propelled by the hidden power of the Holy 
Ghost, than a wild Indian has of the strange 
force that propells the giant steamboat up a 
great river, past the hills and valleys of his 
hunting grounds. To such an Indian the 
steamboat is a strange, wild creature, from 
some far away white man's world; and in 
just as true a sense, the spirit-filled Chris- 
tian, under the baptism of fire, who steers 
straight on for God through the world, is 
regarded by the unregenerate natives of 
earth, as a wild, unaccountable character, 
who is haunted with a celestial dream, that 
renders him unmanageable and impractica- 
ble with the things of time and sense. A 
life of true holiness is mainly an interior 
life. Conversion eflfects mostly the outer 



74 ste;amboat christians. 

life, and sanctification effects mostly the in- 
ner life. I do not mean to say that conver- 
sion does not marvelously change the inner 
life, or that sanctification does not appear in 
much fruit in the outer life, but that mainly 
conversion changes the outer, and true holi- 
ness as manifesting itself in consciousness, 
has its greatest effects in the hidden life of 
the soul. The analogy we are now tracing 
will serve to illustrate this truth, for while 
the sail ship displays its moving forces above 
deck, the steamer hides its moving forces 
below the deck. This is why a life of pure 
faith has so few charms to worldly church 
members, it is.too hidden from the approba- 
tion of men, from visible and tangible suc- 
cess, and requires a humility of heart, and a 
life of secret prayer, which utterly crucifies 
the natural vanity of the mind, and the love 
of display. Now that we have gotten thor- 
oughly launched upon our spiritual voyage, 
we shall have occasion to try the different 
kinds of vessels that go by steam, and each 
of them will be found to serve our purpose 
in unfolding the various types of saints. 



COAST STKAMER CHRISTIANS. 75 



CHAPTER VII. 

Coast Ste:ame:r Christians. 

The higher we rise in creation the greater 
the variety. All of God's works resemble 
himself in this respect, that they grow on us 
with acquaintance. In traveling over the 
Western plains, we first spy the Rocky 
Mountains rising up as a solid blue wall on 
the horizon, without variety, or individual- 
ity; but as we approch them, they break up 
into separate peaks, and ranges; and on 
reaching them, they are split into ten thou- 
sand forms of grandeur, with every con- 
ceivable kind of rally, canyon, and rugged 
beauty, and in whose echoing walls millions 
of people could hide. Thus it is with God 
himself, who is at first dimly discerned by 
the unthinking sinner as a vast unknown 
power, hanging in gloomy outline far off on 
the horizon of an unexplored eternity. But 
as the soul draws nigh through Jesus Christ, 
God suddenly looms up as a Personal Being; 
and drawing still closer, his mercy opens 
out in forgiveness and salvation, as a deep 
green valley suddenly opens in the moun- 



76 COAST STEAMKR CHRISTIANS. 

tains, and then when the soul pushes its way- 
through the cleansing blood into *^the sec- 
ond vail," there opens up multiplied and 
amazing and precious things in God, and 
like to the traveler in the mountains, the 
three Divine Persons stand disclosed like 
mountain ranges, each in distinct glory and 
majesty, and then the great and manifold 
attributes and perfections of our ever blessed 
God rise peak on peak in their white purity 
and loveliness, surprising and overaweing 
in seasons of prayer; and then there are 
deep, silent canyons in God's nature, in 
which we find such quiet resting places, 
where we can lay down our tired, aching 
hearts from the pursuit of bitter foes, and 
where the cries and the songs we send forth 
to God, are caught up by the convolutions 
of the mountain walls, and echoed back in 
startling answers to our prayers from the 
infinite heart, through whose capricious 
chambers we are traveling. What a con- 
stant wonder the living God is to those who 
search after Him. Now the more we know 
of His saints, the more we come to find 
out the great variety among God's servants, 
their different types, and classes, and spe- 
cies, and genius. In a savage state there is 



COAST STKAMKR CHRISTIANS. 77 

hardly any variety, but as men become civ- 
ilized they break up into variety, as to dress, 
food, customs, language, thought, taste, 
gifts, industry; and the higher men rise in 
improvement, the more^ diversified they be- 
come. The same is true of any art, or sci- 
ence, or business ; until one single branch of 
business is sub-divided into scores of special 
departments to be managed by specialists. 
It is all like a tree, starting with a single 
trunk, but branching off into thousands of 
twigs, and leaves, as it approaches full fruit- 
age and maturity. There is a greater vari- 
ety of sail vessels than there is of the tow- 
boat or the rowboat class, because sail ves- 
sels are a higher species. Now, when we 
come to the steamship class of vessels, 
which represent the soul's onward progress 
in the sanctified life, we find a still larger 
variety than in the sail boat class, which is a 
fitting allegory of the beautiful and marvel- 
ous kinds of religious experience and char- 
acter wrought out under the baptism of the 
Holy Spirit. There is a unique personality 
in the depths of the human spirit which is 
never unfolded except in the warm summer 
zone of pure heavenly love. Have you not 
noticed that the lower Christians are in 



78 COAST STKAMKR CHRISTIANS. 

their experience, the more easily they are 
swayed by each other, and always go with 
a majority? But those Christians who are 
crucified with Christ, and live a life of entire 
faith, learn to stand alone, and develop a 
distinct variety of living. 

In the previous chapter we treated of the 
transition from the sail ship to the steamer, 
which illustrates the transition of the be- 
liever from the merely justified state to the 
crucifixion of inward sin, and the incoming 
of the abiding Comforter. But as all 
steamboats are not of the same rank, neither 
are all sanctified Christians of the same type 
or rank in the great Kingdom of God. 
There is a class of steam vessels that are 
called '^coasters," not because they could 
not cross the ocean under favorable circum- 
stances, but they are specially adapted to 
rivers, sounds, bays, and skirting along near 
the shore if they are at sea. Such are the 
side-wheelers or the huge wheel propellers 
on the Western rivers, and the small size 
screw propellers for coast service in com- 
merce. There is a class of fully consecrated 
Christians that correspond with these coast 
steamers. 

I, River and coast steamers are not con- 



COAST STKAMKR CHRISTIANS. 79 

structed with special capacity for the storms 
and dangers of the high seas ; and although 
they are genuine steamboats, and propelled 
by the same kind of power as the giant 
ocean craft, yet their makeup demands keep- 
ing near the shore. This is just the case 
with a species of sanctified souls, whose 
moral and spiritual makeup has not the ca- 
pacity for the strain and heroism that other 
Christians may be called to. There are just 
as great differences in the capacity of differ- 
ent men's moral and spiritual nature as in 
the capacities of their physical or mental 
natures. Some souls have ten times, or a 
hundred times, larger capabilities for suffer- 
ing, or loving, or trusting, or endurance, or 
humility, or discernment, or prayer, or pure 
worship, or spiritual fruitfulness, than other 
souls may have. Oftentimes truly convert- 
ed, or even sanctified persons, are con- 
demned by others for not doing what they 
really have no adequate capacity for doing. 
It is unscriptural and unphilosophical to say 
that even all sanctified Christians can have 
the same measure of love, or humility, or 
sweetness of spirit, or any other grace. One 
of the last lessons Christians ever learn, is 
to have real divine charity for each other, 



8o COAST STKAME^R CHRISTIANS. 

that wideness of tender consideration which 
makes allowances for the multiplied variety 
and different capacities of God's people. 
This lack of charity is almost entirely with 
souls who are themselves narrow, and in- 
consistent, and greatly lacking in spiritual 
capability. Divine grace does not recon- 
struct the constitution of the soul, or anni- 
hilate any legitimate faculty of man's being, 
and neither does it create any new organs, 
or any new capacity of soul or body; but 
cleanses, rectifies, illuminates and brings 
forth into consciousness and holy service 
the natural capabilities that are in the being 
by natural generation ; for all the operations 
of grace work in us according to our make- 
up. Hence there are truly sanctified people, 
whose very moral constitution mark them 
out as coast steamers, or river and harbor 
saints, that in their very spiritual and intel- 
lectual build, cannot venture into those 
lonely and rugged forms of spiritual life and 
enterprises that larger-hearted saints are 
called to undertake. 

2. Let us notice some of the shore lines 
under which these coast steamer Christians 
take refuge. There is a high bluff called 
"sectarian theology," under which these 



COAST STKAMKR CHRISTIANS. 8 1 

coasting saints constantly shelter, and they 
believe in that kind of sanctification^ and 
only in that degree of grace, which is set 
forth in the special teaching of their church 
denomination. Now, remember that sound 
Bible doctrine is essential to any saving 
faith or progress in holiness ; and the Bible 
is itself God's doctrine, but we now refer to 
those diversified interpretations which dif- 
ferent theologians have given to scripture, 
upon which different sectarian churches 
have been constructed. A little coast 
steamer along the shores of New England, 
or Ireland, or Florida, would naturally be 
steered by the local shore lines where it was 
sailing, and in danger would seek shelter 
under the familiar bluffs nearby. In like 
manner a coast steamer Christian, even 
though he was sanctified, would be led by 
his natural capacity, to guide his thoughts, 
his faith, his testimony and service for God, 
according to the shore lines of his denom- 
ination, whether it was Episcopal, or Bap- 
tist, or Methodist, or Presbyterian, or Qua- 
ker, or any other special form of teaching. 
There are truly devoted souls who want to 
love God with all their heart, and be im- 
pelled by the indwelling of holy fire, who 



82 COAST STKAMBR CHRISTIANS. 

can never venture out in the great things of 
God beyond the shadow of their church 
steeples, nor drink in deep spiritual teach- 
ing, unless it is moulded in the good old 
phraseology of their denominational tradi- 
tion. 

Again, there is a promontory under which 
coast steamers take shelter called "eccles- 
iastical authority," and beyond the sight of 
which a great many little steam craft dare 
not venture. There are instances in the 
Christian life of downright cowardice, in 
which both ministers and church members 
back down from their great high calling, 
and forfeit a deep spiritual experience, and 
also a victor's crown at the coming of Jesus, 
by clinging to the threats of a hooting ma- 
jority, or of superiors in office. But it is not 
always cowardice that causes some sancti- 
fied souls to be timid and conservative, and 
not to venture in their spiritual lives beyond 
certain established sectarian authority, for 
in many cases the soul has not the capacity 
for Apostolic boldness; and there are in- 
stances in which the religious authority may 
not prohibit the deepest spiritual life. Cow- 
ardice is sin, and if we fail to obey God in a 
clear principle because of some overshadow- 



COAST STEAMER CHRISTIANS. 83 

ing human authority, we lose grace ; but we 
are in this chapter referring to a class of 
coast steamer saints who are so constituted 
as to be deficient in true martyr mettle, and 
though saved from all sin, and living in pure 
love, they sail in shallow water and instinct- 
ively find their sphere of service under the 
protection of others, and whose faith must 
be sheltered by their church creed, and 
whose active service for God must be within 
the limits of permitted human authority. 
We never can tell when we meet these cau- 
tious shore-clinging saints, whether they are 
cowardly, or whether they are filling their 
proper sphere in the great Kingdom. Just 
as every ship in a great nation is not a bat- 
tleship, so in the Divine Kingdom every 
saint has neither the capacity nor the calling 
to be a Paul or a Luther. So let us thank 
God for these coasting saints, who are im- 
pelled by the secret enginery of steam power 
to move hither and thither in shallow 
waters, doing the King's business, and mak- 
ing little excursions out in the ocean of di- 
vine things, though not entering those grand 
and sturdy experiences which are brought 
out in the ocean steamer or the battleship. 



84 ST^AMTUG CHRISTIANS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Steamtug Christians. 

Every step of progress, in any direction, 
involves either a sacrifice or a separation of 
some kind. Even in matters of human 
knowledge, of commerce, of science, of do- 
mestic life, this principle is true, that pro- 
gress necessitates sacrifice or separation. 
We cannot advance one step without de- 
taching ourselves from the place where we 
now are, and breaking up some old relation- 
ship. To ascend the mountain we must 
leave the valley, to form a new home the 
young pair must break up from the old 
home, to learn a new science we must aban- 
don many an old idea, to rise to a position 
of responsibility or honor involves fresh 
sacrifices and greater cares; in fact, every 
person, every creature, everything in crea- 
tion, is folded round with the meshes of this 
law, you cannot advance without paying for 
it. God is the only being who from eter- 
nity to eternity is so full and perfect and ab- 
solute in every way as to have no increase, 
no diminution, and whose unlimited self- 



STKAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 85 

sufificiency fills every point of space and 
every moment of duration ; within whose ca- 
pacious arms all creation floats, yet remains 
distinct from his ever blessed Godhead. But 
with all creatures there is change, and an on- 
going progress, either upwards or down- 
wards, either inward or outward, either ex- 
panding or contracting, either brightening 
or darkening, and oftentimes in this earthly 
stage of existence, moving both ways by 
turns. God's call for Abraham to leave his 
father's house, and be an emigrant with 
Jehovah toward the setting of the sun, has 
an echo throughout the world, and a dupli- 
cate form in millions of lives. Now, every 
law of nature either runs up into the spirit- 
ual state, or is repeated there on a finer scale 
and with wider range. So, remember, as 
we journey along in our spiritual ships, that 
we run up against this principle of paying 
some price for every step of progress. It is 
an axiom, that if we want Pentecostal 
power, we must pay Pentecostal prices. 
There is a unique species of steamship 
called the "tugboat,'' and it sets forth in a 
most striking way, a class of very worthy 
and heroic Christian souls. The steamtug 
is constructed on this very principle of sac- 



86 STKAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 

rifice and separation, for it is built pre-emi- 
nently for strength, and so it must sacrifice 
largeness of bulk and showy splendor, and 
it is built for swiftness not only in speed, 
but in turning in a small compass, and so 
it must sacrifice many qualities of other 
kinds of ships, and by its smallness in size, 
it must be separated from those popular 
kinds of steamboats and ferry-boats which 
are adapted for carrying large excursion 
parties. If we trace out the allegory, all 
these principles will be manifest in types of 
Christian life, and especially in a class of 
energetic, swift-moving, missionary souls, 
who are specially called of God to do a work 
in the service for souls, corresponding to the 
service of steamtugs in maritime commerce. 
I. The steamtug has a special build with 
the following ends in view, to be as strong 
and swift as possible with the least amount 
of size. The body of such a vessel is not 
formed to carry many passengers, or much 
freight on board, but only large enough to 
carry a powerful engine, in fact the hull of 
the vessel is made entirely for the engine, 
just as some people seem to have bodies 
built expressly for their souls. In one sense 
this should be true of everybody, but there 



STKAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 87 

are special cases where the body seems to 
be exclusively for the spiritual enginery of 
the soul; for this reason tugboats are not 
built for show, and there is but little about 
them for show, although when they go 
shooting across the harbor, or plunging 
through the waves, there is a fascinating 
beauty in their graceful motion, which re- 
sembles the spiritual charm of those busy, 
rapid-moving, fire-baptized souls, who are 
carried away with a missionary zeal in serv- 
ing the Lord. 

Again, the structure of a steamtug does 
not admit of its being used for carrying 
many passengers, or going with large ex- 
cursion parties, which illustrates the fact 
that those saints who serve as tugboats for 
Jesus, can never adapt themselves to going 
with the majority, or working on popular 
lines, they never load themselves down with 
religious moonlight excursions, and are not 
in demand for things that are popular, but 
are always in demand in times of distress. 
Every Christian must have all the graces, 
but there are special types, in which some 
one or two graces largely predominate. 
Every steamboat must combine all the prin- 
ciples that go to make a steamboat, yet 



88 STKAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 

there are distinct types, so widely different 
as to hardly be recognized as belonging to 
the same family; as for instance, see the dif- 
ference between a ferryboat and a battle- 
ship, or between an immense triple deck 
sidewheeler and a little tug that plays 
around it almost unnoticed. 

2. The tugboat has only one mission to 
fill, and that is to help other vessels, and un- 
less it is employed in ministering to all 
other kinds of ships, it is practically out of a 
job. True, a steamtug may sometimes be 
employed to carry the mails, or take a few 
passengers, or a small amount of freight; 
but its special and well nigh exclusive use 
is to help other vessels of all sorts and sizes 
whatsoever. For this reason it is built for 
nothing but strength, and hence requires a 
deeper draft of water, a stronger wheel and 
a heavier engine, than any other ship in the 
world to its size. 

How true all this is of these sanctified 
persons who are specially adapted for res- 
cuing other souls, and for all kinds of mis- 
sion work. Above all the graces, they need 
strength, and unflagging zeal; a tireless 
perseverance, a humble, patient, plodding 
courage, that tugs away on some stranded 



STEAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 89 

soul, and will not give up, till it comes tri- 
umphantly steaming up the harbor with 
some dear soul in tow. Among the believ- 
ers who have received their Pentecost, there 
are some who are specially gifted to be pion- 
eers in opening up new missions, new fields 
of spiritual thought, new methods of service, 
who move on rapidly here and there. Then, 
there are others specially gifted to teach, to 
explain scripture, to harmonize and adjust 
Bible doctrine, and take difficult problems 
and unfold them with the beauty and sim- 
plicity of sun-light, enabling multitudes to 
see their way clear through matters of faith. 
Then there are others who are pre-emi- 
nently gentle and winsome in their lives, 
remarkably gifted in gracefulness of spirit, 
body, words, and manners ; pouring forth a 
tranquil stream of comfort to others. Then 
there are some whose great gift is on the 
divine side, and who seem deficient in skill 
to deal directly with many of their fellows, 
but all of whose nature opens out toward 
God ; who live mostly in the mysterious and 
the supernatural, and they are regarded by 
some as impracticable and heavenly treas- 
ures, like the old Prophets; these get hold 
on the divine perfections, and get secret in- 



90 STKAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 

sights into the way things are going, and 
produce results by way of the Throne. 

Again, there are those who are full of rip- 
pling music, gleeful, childlike, light-hearted 
saints, specially gifted to care for children, 
nursing the sick, whose lives bubble and 
glance like a mountain stream splashing 
over its pebly bed, and who make up in 
cheerfulness for what they lack in depth. 
Then there is a species of beautifully sad 
souls, who all their lives have been attended 
with sorrow ; their tears are frequently their 
meat and drink, and even their purest and 
sweetest joys are tinctured with pathetic, 
tranquil, heaven-yearning sorrow; who 
carry their cross deep-sunken in their 
heart's blood; they are deep, meditative 
souls, and as scripture says, ''gather the 
precious things brought forth by the moon 
and the stars.'' And many other varieties 
could be deliniated, but the tugboat Chris- 
tian, while he may have some of all these 
foregoing traits, he differs in type from all 
of them, in that his special gift is that of 
divine zeal and benevolence acting in an 
emergency, with promptness, with agility, 
and combining the dashing speed of a 
mother's love for her babe, with the patient, 



STKAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 9 1 

gentle persistence of a nurse with the sick. 
Their greatest gift is energy of character. 
The moment you meet them, you feel the 
presence of a spiritual backbone. They 
may be of a modest and shy disposition, 
with no special attractiveness in ordinary 
circumstances, but as quick as a storm 
comes up, and a hurricane dashes along the 
coast, wrecking vessels, they are up and at 
it, plunging into all sorts of difficulties, fac- 
ing danger in a howling mob, going into 
slums, tackling a demoniac, catching at 
some fallen creature, and regardless of self- 
interest, putting their lives in the jaws of 
death for the welfare of others. 

Let us look a little in detail at the multi- 
plied ministries of the steam tugboat. It 
must have the qualities of quick motion, to 
go forward, or backward, or dart around a 
big ship readily. Also, the quality of 
plunging in the waves, with hatches all 
down, and be fairly smothered under the 
water, to drag a ship in from a heavy sea. 
It must be adapted to ocean or river, to tow 
an old lighter, or turn around the bow of a 
battleship. In every circumstance, the su- 
preme requisite is that of strength. Now 
all these qualities constitute the spiritual 



92 STEJAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 

furnishing of a sanctified mission v/orker, 
for such an one must be adapted to various 
classes, and various needs of his fellows. 
One work of a steamtug is to run out to sea, 
or along the coasts, and hunt up foundered 
or dismantled ships of any kind, and pull 
them into harbor. This is exactly the work 
of anointed mission workers, to watch out 
for any kind of a character that is foundered, 
or torn to pieces in a moral storm, and by 
tying fast to them with the hawser of com- 
passion and prayer, draw them into the 
harbor of repentance and restoration. Also, 
in times of war, when great and gallant 
ships are transpierced with the enemy's 
shells, or their rudder, or wheel house has 
been shot away, then there is work for the 
little energetic steamtug, that quickly runs 
up alongside its wounded brother, and 
steams away to some distant navy yard for 
repairs. 

Ah ! what tales of heroic love service 
God's mission workers in the great cities 
could tell, far more thrilling than the story 
of old sailors who have been pulled in from 
equinoxial storms. The battles of the soul 
are always being fought, and the explosion 
of hellish dynamite to cripple or kill God's 



st:^amtug christians. 93 

servants, will never stop till Jesus returns, 
and chains Satan, and speaks to the whole 
earth, ''Be still, and know that I am God, 
I will be exalted in all the earth." Hence 
there is constant need for steamtug saints, 
to be gathering in either wrecked or wound- 
ed souls. It requires more love, more deep, 
solid power, to rescue the fallen and the 
wounded, than any other kind of work in 
the world. Remember the steamtug is ten 
times stronger than any other kind of ves- 
sel in proportion to its size; and a person 
given up to the rescue of the fallen, must 
have a strength ten times beyond the aver- 
age preacher or evangelist. Men and 
women may not only be very prominent 
Christians, but prominent holiness preachers 
and evangelists, with ability to run camp 
meetings, and conventions, and foreign mis- 
sionary enterprises, who are greatly lacking 
in that deep, vast, tender, ocean-hearted 
love, sufficient to go down in literal practi- 
cal compassion and help for those who are 
bruised and mangled in their lives. To be 
filled with real perfect love, is a thousand 
times more difficult and rare than it is to 
preach eloquently on the subject. Just as 
there is many a beautiful ship, that with 



94 STKAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 

sails all spread, will fascinate the beholder, 
but utterly unadapted to pull a stranded 
merchantman off the sand bank, or tow a 
canalboat across a harbor, so there is many 
a Christian who can captivate multitudes 
with his beautiful words about the spiritual 
life, who has not the humility to help a soul 
off the rocks, or at the bottom of society. 
And we must not always condemn such, for 
in many cases they literally know nothing* 
of that great capacity of love nature to con- 
stitute them rescuers of the distressed. The 
tugboat Christian is a walking life-saving 
station. Even a splendid sanctified head 
may exist with very little capacity for di- 
vine compassion. Another kind of work 
for the steamtug, is to take in tow 
schooners, sail ships, and all sorts of ocean 
craft, when they enter a bay or river, and 
pull them to their moorings, or to the dock, 
in order to facilitate the journey, and es- 
pecially through narrow places difficult to 
sail. This also illustrates a work done by 
tugboat Christians, who lay hold of souls 
that are coming home to Jesus, or that want 
prayer for healing, or special guidance, and 
by their loving zeal they save souls from 
beating their way against difficult! 2s, and 



STBAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 95 

by direct methods of immediate submission 
and present tense faith, lead the seekers 
very quickly to rest in Christ. Another 
work which is very interesting to watch 
the steamtugs perform, is that of turning 
round a great ship at the wharf or in a nar- 
row space of water. Some ships are too 
large to turn themselves quickly in a nar- 
row port, and so steam tugboats are em- 
ployed for that purpose, and frequently from 
one to half a dozen tugboats will apply all 
their strength towards docking a big ship, 
or turning it round so it can head for the 
sea. Some will be pulling at the bow, and 
others pushing at the stern, till the great 
floating mountain of iron is in proper posi- 
tion. This is the kind of service which 
God's two steamtug saints, Aquilla and 
Priscilla, rendered to that great moral ship, 
Apollas. After hearing him preach with 
marvelous eloquence, though he was a gi- 
gantic soul, and elegantly equipped to sail 
life's ocean, they saw he needed help, for he 
was not headed toward the open sea of the 
fullness of God, and so these humble rescue 
mission workers, who had gone with Paul 
down in the horrible slums of Rome, and 
hauled out many a sin-battered soul, they 



96 STKAMTUG CHRISTIANS. 

now applied their energies to the more dig- 
nified task of helping to turn a great Apos- 
tle into a right position with the baptism of 
the Holy Spirit. There is need for this 
same kind of ministry all the time among 
God's people. There are always among 
ministers and evangelists those who need to 
be helped by other Christians of richer ex- 
perience and wisdom, albeit of humbler po- 
sitions in life. The Creator has never given 
all His gifts in full measure to any one per- 
son, and His plan is that of supplementary 
service, which Paul distinctly explains by 
the members of the body serving each other. 
As the ocean liner, which in magnitude and 
equipment is the wonder of the civilized 
world, must condescend, when in a narrow 
harbor, to accept of the ministry of the 
humble steamtug, so there is no Christian, 
however great or good, who does not many 
and many a time stand in great need of the 
counsel, the reproofs, the advice, the 
prayers, the sympathies, and the strong re- 
inforcement, of those chosen souls who in 
humility are gifted with remarkable 
strength, and who have a special calling like 
the steamtug to help others. 



OCKAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 97 



CHAPTER IX. 

Ocean Steamship Christians. 

There is an indefinable beauty in mo- 
tion. There is something- in the constitu- 
tion of our minds which is always in sym- 
pathy with an everlasting- ongoing pro- 
gress. Whether we look into the motion 
of physical things, or the expansion and ad- 
vancement of the mind, or the new inven- 
tions in art and commerce, or in the spirit- 
ual world, the lifting up of a soul from sin 
to holiness, or the progress of a feeble be- 
liever out of weakness into the marvelous 
depths of holy love, there is a perpetual 
charm in all these kinds of ongoing ad- 
vancement. Man was made to walk, not 
only with his body, but in his heart, his 
mind, his eye was made to pace the purple 
fields of the starry heavens, and some day, 
if he is true to his Maker, he will fly swift 
as the beams of light. Our eye is instinct- 
ively captivated by the swift express train, 
or the rush of a river, or the speed of a 
great ship. We love to watch the unfold- 
ings of an infant's life, the acquisition of 



98 OCKAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 

knowledge, or the display of some new in- 
vention. People will admire you if you are 
succeeding and getting on well. If you 
have seen much of life, and gone through 
many vicissitudes and calamities, did you 
notice when you had dark days that almost 
nobody took any interest in you, and how 
many people seemed to act as if you were 
in their way, and the world seemed to have 
no place in it for you, and as David said, 
you were "like a dead man out of mind,'' 
and people forgot you, and you had to be 
re-introduced to old acquaintances who 
fairly idolized you in the palmy days of the 
past; and in your loneliness you were like 
a sailor fallen overboard, or stranded on a 
little island, while the crowded ship had 
gone on, leaving you to learn the lesson 
that Jesus is the only one that takes a heart- 
felt interest in those who are poor and help- 
less. While the main cause arises from the 
heartless depravity of men, there is a secon- 
dary cause for such treatment in the fact 
that you were not getting along well. Oh 
how people do love prosperity, and because 
the human mind is constituted to admire 
progressive motion, yet sin has so blighted 
as well as perverted all the faculties of the 



OCEAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 99 

human soul, that people are carried away 
even with vicious things just so long as 
their swift movements captivate the under- 
standing. Multitudes of professing Chris- 
tians are so destitute of any spiritual dis- 
cernment, as to be led away into the worst 
of errors, and the most outlandish fanati- 
cisms, merely because of their mushroom 
growth, and startling prosperity. In the 
eye of the common millions, anything that 
succeeds must surely be of God. It is the 
fascination of rapid motion, like the beauty 
of a shooting or a falling star, and Satan, 
we are told by our Saviour, fell like light- 
ning from heaven. So there is an awful 
fascination in the swiftness of Satanic 
movements. The beauty that shines out 
in all divine progress is soothing, ennobling 
and untiring. We love to grow, and there 
is no growth so satisfying, so sweet and 
placid, as growth in love to God, in gentle 
charity for our fellows, and in the widening 
of our understandings to see the perfections 
of the ever blessed Trinity. But in order 
to have motion, there must be an adequate 
moving force. And in order to grow, there 
must be the conditions of growth. As the 
secret of a bounding ocean steamer lies in 



lOO OCKAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 

the fiery heart of power in the center of the 
ship, so the secret of the heavenly progress 
of a servant of God, is in having all the in- 
ner springs of action all aflame with the 
love of Jesus. As the secret of a fine field 
of growing corn is in a clean and well culti- 
vated soil, so the secret of a Christian's 
growth in grace is in having a pure con- 
science, washed in the blood of the Lamb, 
and the affections under the constant cul- 
ture of humble prayer. Let us now con- 
sider another phase of a healthy progres- 
sive soul in the sanctified state, under the 
emblem of another type of steamship, 
namely, a great ocean liner, such as ply 
across the Atlantic or Pacific, built both for 
passengers and freight, as well as the max- 
imum of speed and safety. 

I. In addition to the general remarks 
previously made on steam craft in general, 
one of the first things that strikes our at- 
tention about a great steel built ocean 
steamer, is its amazing capacity. There is 
no telling whereunto the building of these 
great ships will grow, for what was con- 
sidered a monster of a ship fifty years ago, 
is now regarded as a small affair. A m^an 
unacquainted with the subject could hardly 



OCKAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. lOI 

imagine the manifold capacities of an ocean 
liner. And we may remark in passing that 
a person who is unrenewed in his natural 
mind, can form no conception of the moral 
and spiritual capacities of an ordinary hu- 
man soul under the full baptism of the Holy 
Ghost. There is something almost terrific 
in the possible spiritual grandeurs of the 
soul, when freed from sin and self, and 
united to Christ; and history has glittering 
samples of feeble old men, and delicate 
women, and little children, who under the 
sway of the Holy Spirit, have exhibited 
such towering faith, such humble resigna- 
tion, such imselfish benevolence, such he- 
roic martyrdoms, as to surpass the com- 
prehension of ordinary mortals as much as 
the capacity of a twenty thousand tons ship 
surpasses the thought of a backwoodsman, 
who never saw a vessel mast before. What 
a marvel it was when men first found that 
iron could be made to swim, and not only 
swim, but carry thousands of tons along 
with it, and do it with more safety than if 
made of wood. That the heavy metal of 
iron can be constructed to float like a cork, 
is an illustration of how the omnipotent 
Jesus, through the shedding of His blood, 



I02 OCEAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 

and the action of the Holy Spirit, can take 
a sinful soul, more prone to sink in the 
depths of hell than iron is to sink in water, 
and so purge and reconstruct it, as to make 
it float in the very justice and love of God, 
with security and joy. These ships are so 
built as to lie deep in the water, and their 
depth of draught measures their capacity 
for cargo, and also for safety in heavy 
storms at sea, which illustrates the fact 
that those spiritual lives of the ocean steam- 
ship class, must not only be sanctified, that 
is run by fire at the heart, but so built on a 
pattern of depth in secret prayer, and a 
hidden life in God, that lies out of sight of 
all their ordinary acquaintances. It is this 
depth of draught in a life of secret prayer, 
that measures the carrying capacity of a 
soul, and also its security in times of calam- 
ity. It is a fact, that iron which is one of 
the heaviest substances, not only is so con- 
structed in ships as to make it float, but to 
float more securely and more permanently, 
and then be so constructed that its safety 
depends on the depth to which it sinks in 
the sea. All of these considerations are 
wonderfully brought out in the supernat- 
ural life which Christ imparts to the perfect 



OCEAK STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. IO3 

believer, for divine grace changes man's 
fallen nature, and renders it possible for 
the soul to be and do just the opposite of 
sinful nature. The Apostle Paul says that 
''what the law could not do, in that it was 
weak through the flesh, God sending His 
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and 
condemned sin in the flesh, that the right- 
eousness of the law might be fulfilled in us ; 
and that the law of the Spirit of life, had 
made him free from the law of sin and 
death." Rom. 8:2-4. This is the miracle 
of making the iron to swim, and making 
the moral character exactly the opposite of 
its natural state. 

Another great capacity in a steamship 
is its speed. The first steamships occupied 
nearly a month in crossing the Atlantic. 
It was considered an amazing triumph of 
engineering when they were built to cross 
in two weeks. And then for many years 
the time was cut to one week, and now at 
this writing many ships make the three 
thousand mile run in less than a week, and 
it is prophesied that by applying the tur- 
bine principle in engineering, they will 
build ships to cross that great ocean in four 
days or less. Only think of a floating 



I04 OCKAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 

mountain of steel, six hundred feet long or 
more, and from seventy to ninety feet wide, 
five and six stories high, speeding through 
the ocean against enormous winds and 
waves, at a rate of from twenty-four to 
thirty miles an hour, without stopping a 
moment for three thousand miles, surpass- 
ing the flight of the express trains of a few 
years ago. This great speed has its coun- 
terpart in the progress and tireless zeal in 
those great souls that are filled with the 
truth and the love of God, and who push 
their way against incalculable difficulties, 
ever growing in grace, at a speed never 
dreamed of by the mere moralist, or one 
who thinks of advancement by slow evolu- 
tion, instead of the active steps of faith. 
But the secret of this great speed in steam- 
ships is at an enormous cost of fuel and en- 
gine building inside the ship. Oftentimes 
it requires from thirty to fifty stokers con- 
stantly shoveling in the coal in the great 
furnaces, and a ton of coal is consumed 
every few moments to produce the great 
speed, and very few of the passengers have 
any knowledge of the vast world of work 
that is being carried on down at the bot- 
tom of the ship. In like manner the ag- 



OCEAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. I05 

gressiveness that bears onward a devoted 
saint in a life of steady, constant love and 
service, is not produced by cheap resolu- 
tions, or fanatical vows, but at a cost of the 
whole soul being yielded to God, and all 
the inward fountains of the will and spirit 
being fed with ceaseless vigilance on God's 
word in prayer and watchfulness. There 
is just as much difference of growth in grace 
between various Christians, as between the 
speed of various vessels, from the little skiff 
that makes four miles an hour, to the ocean 
liner that makes thirty miles an hour. 
There are certain lessons that every real 
Christian has to learn sooner or later, and 
some believers in a few months, or a few 
years after their conversion, will pass 
through the different stages of experience 
and knowledge that others will not know 
for a score of years. This progress depends 
partly on the natural gifts of the soul, but 
mainly on how much the secret furnaces of 
the soul are kept supplied with the fuel of 
God's word and prayer. 

Another surprise that comes to us, is the 
capacity in these great ships for cargo. In 
addition to hundreds of passengers, some 
of them will carry several thousand tons of 



Io6 OCEAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 

dead weight cargo. I had occasion some 
years ago in preaching in a small inland 
town, to illustrate some Gospel truth by the 
capacity of a great ship, and many of the 
people thought I was telling a huge fairy 
Story. Think of a vessel that could take 
on board a whole town with a thousand 
population, all the people, houses, furniture 
and fences, or the lumber sufficient to build 
them, and carry the whole across the sea. 
But if w^e could see things as the angels do, 
and look at the souls of great and humble 
saints, we would witness a spiritual capacity 
for carrying burdens, and performing la- 
bors, and lifting responsibilities, and endur- 
ing trials, and achieving results in the spir- 
itual world, far greater, and extending over 
a wider range of life, and running on into 
future ages, that would more amaze us than 
anything in the giant ocean craft of com- 
merce. The capacity of the soul in spirit- 
ual things cannot be known or measured in 
our present state, because we have no 
gauges by which to measure Divine things. 
Just as our world has three parts, the earth, 
the sea, and the air, so man has a body, a 
soul, and a spirit; and we can measure the 
earth easier than we can measure the sea, 



OCEAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. IO7 

and we can measure the sea a great deal 
easier than we can measure the air ; in fact, 
the altitude of the air, and some other 
things about it, have never yet been meas- 
ured. In Hke manner men can easily esti- 
mate the human body; size, weight, run- 
ning speed, and longevity. They can also 
measure the soul or natural mind as mani- 
fest in war, poetry, music, art, and mathe- 
matics, and similar things. But man's spir- 
itual nature, like the atmosphere, runs up 
out of sight, and extends beyond the knowl- 
edge of the carnal man, and has capacities 
in the realm of faith, of love, of suffering, 
of sacrifice, of joy, of illumination, of tire- 
less perseverance, beyond the imagination 
of most men. 

2. These great ships that lie deep in the 
water, are so constructed as to be in a sense 
on friendly terms with the sea, and to over- 
come many of the difficulties that hinder 
the sail ships. For instance, sail ships are 
subject to calms, in which for hours or days 
they can make but little headway, but the 
steamship driven by a force in its interior 
depths, is not the least hindered by a dead 
calm. This illustrates how the believer, 
when purified in heart, and filled with the 



I08 OCEAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 

motive power of the Holy Spirit, is taken 
into a deep acquaintance with the Divine 
life, and on friendly terms with the perfec- 
tions of God, and is not effected by those 
outward superficial feelings of the soul, as 
was the case before the work of sanctifica- 
tion. There are spiritual calms in religious 
life as in the physical world, and most 
Christians seem perfectly helpless in their 
devotion when overtaken by a dead calm. 
At such times faith is languid, prayer is 
dull, views of Scripture are dim, and a 
strange apathy settles down on the soul, 
rendering it like a helpless becalmed sail 
ship at sea. Under the baptism of the Holy 
Spirit, the spiritual life becomes more in- 
terior and concentrated, and is a matter of 
pure faith, in which the emotions are very 
little relied upon, and like the steamship, it 
goes right on regardless of emotional calms. 
Again, the great steamer just about as re- 
gardless of a heavy storm as of a dead calm, 
for such a large proportion of it is under the 
water, and being built with double bottoms, 
and double decks, and such ribs of steel as 
to be as much as possible impervious to 
winds and waves, it goes right on in the 
teeth of a gale almost as fast as in calm 



OCKAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. I09 

weather. On the other hand the sail ship 
that is crippled with a calm is also crippled 
with too much wind, and subject to far 
more dangers in having sails and spars 
blown away. This same principle applies 
in spiritual life, for a soul walking in vic- 
torious fellowship with Christ by the in- 
dwelling Comforter, ovv^ing to its depth in 
humility, and the iron-like strength of its 
consecration, with the flame of love in the 
inner will, goes right on through storms of 
trial, temptation, poverty, hard work, lone- 
liness, and driving mists of mental perplex- 
ities and difficulties, just the same, if not a 
little better than when outward things 
seem favorable; for engineers tell us that 
the engines will make steam faster in a head 
wind than in a calm. And the same Chris- 
tian who is yet in the sail ship class, and 
liable to be hindered by calms, is on the 
other hand in times of storm either shat- 
tered or torn to pieces in their emotions; 
and the same people that wait for a good 
breeze of feeling, are the very ones that 
cannot stand an excess of feeling without 
capsizing, or running on the rocks of wild 
fascinations. The same Christian that 
never waits for the play of good feelings, is 



no OCEAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 

the very one that can endure the strongest 
emotions without losing his balance, just as 
the ship that does not wait on the wind can 
stand more wind than other kind of ves- 
sel. Another feature showing the steam- 
ship to be victorious over surface difficulties 
is, it does not have to tack against a head 
wind, but goes straight on, which illus- 
trates the spiritual advantage in a life of 
pure faith, enabling the believer to go 
straight ahead without turning right or left, 
and being influenced by so many great peo- 
ple, and big preachers, and dear friends, 
and human reasonings, and financial con- 
siderations, and fleshly prudence, and such 
things as are constantly twisting most 
Christians in a zigzag course. Another 
feature of the steamship is, it can be 
steered with such precision across the sea. 
Lying so deep in the water, and built with 
double keels to prevent drifting, with an 
enormous rudder, which is moved by 
steam, with the finest machinery, a beard- 
less lad will stand in the wheel house, and 
with the touch of his finger guide the iron 
leviathan through the great waves day after 
day, holding the prow to a given point on 
the compass, and when the distant shore is 



OCEAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. Ill 

sighted, the bow of the ship will not vary 
but a few feet from the aim that the helms- 
man took when he started. In like manner 
the more advanced a believer is in the life 
of Christ, the more thoroughly he is let 
down into humility and divine union, the 
more easily he can be guided, the more 
gently he can be steered by God's wisdom, 
to the exact destination mapped out for him 
on the inspired chart. The Holy Ghost 
tells us of two ways God has in guiding the 
soul ; one is to be guided by the Lord's eye, 
the other is to be guided with bit and bri- 
dle, like the horse or the mule. The great- 
est steamship on earth can be steered easier 
than a canoe, and this principle is true in 
grace, that the holiest souls can be the 
most easily led by the touches of God's 
hand. 

Another beautiful feature about these 
great ships is the quiet, decorous order 
with which the work is all done. As a gen- 
eral thing the smaller the boat the greater 
the fuss and confusion in managing it, 
which is true of souls as well as ships. 
Walking the deck of a giant ocean liner day 
after day you would hardly know that 
there were any officers or crew except as 



112 OCKAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 

you see them dressed in uniform, or quietly 
and promptly attending to their work. The 
commands are given in signals, or in a mod- 
erate tone of voice, for the authority is un- 
disputed and without bluster; the very op- 
posite of the rough, loud-mouthed and 
harsh words on smaller boats of the old- 
time class. A fussy, boisterous mannered 
soul, always bespeaks its littleness and shal- 
lowness in grace. A soul that is filled with 
God, takes on the manners of the heavenly 
world, and imitates the meek, quiet maj- 
esty of the divine mind, and at a mere hint 
of the authority of Jesus, the soul moves 
softly and promptly to do His will. In this 
stage of the spiritual life, the soul lays aside 
the spirit of bragging, of self-praise, of ex- 
aggeration, of efficiency, of human noise, 
and goes onward in a thoughtful, quiet or- 
der, covered all over with the unquestioned 
mandates of the great Captain of salvation. 
3. It is a general principle in the con- 
struction of ocean steamers, that the greater 
and finer they are, the more precautions are 
taken to insure safety. These great ships 
are built with double bottoms, so that if 
one is partly broken away by a rock or a 
collision, there is another one in reserve. 



OCEAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. II 3 

They are also built in water-tight sections, 
so if a colHsion should break a hole in one 
side only a small section of the vessel 
would be flooded with water. Some years 
ago an accident happened to one of these 
ships, but it went steaming into harbor 
with nearly a thousand tons of water on 
board without harm to the passengers or 
to much of the freight. The spiritual life 
has been so fashioned by Him who made 
the worlds, and planned all the various 
ages, that the farther the life of faith ad- 
vances the greater is its security. There 
are Christians who cannot endure the strain 
of great calamities any more than a ferry- 
boat could weather a cyclone in mid ocean ; 
and there are other believers, who though 
subjected to calamities and various sorts 
and degrees of disaster, by virtue of the 
principle of faith and consecration, have a 
reserve force to pull through, and make the 
harbor without sinking at sea. This feat- 
ure of security is manifest in the length of 
time these steel ships can be in service. 
Wooden ships have been known to last 
from thirty to well ni^h fifty years, but 
iron ships are of such recent invention no 
one knows how long they will last, though 



114 OCEAN STEAMSHIP CHRISTIANS. 

it is evident they may be used with occa« 
sional repairs two or three times longer 
than vessels of wood. This illustrates the 
marvelous perseverance which enters into 
the spiritual life, when it is not only sanc- 
tified, but established in fixed fervor. 

Thus we see that in all things as the 
principles of steam-going craft are brought 
to their highest forms in the ocean steam- 
ship, so all the principles of grace are 
brought to their strongest manifestation in 
those believers **who are strengthened with 
all might by the Holy Spirit in the inner 
man." 



BATTI^B SHIP CHRISTIANS. II5 



CHAPTER X. 

Battle Ship Christians. 

The very word "battle'' implies the exist- 
ence of sin, for if there were no sin there 
would be no war, either spiritual or national, 
or among the lower animals. Sin is always 
a disturbing principle, producing division 
and collision, in morals, mind, or matter. In 
the very nature of things the principle of 
holiness must be irreconcilably opposed to 
all sin, whether latent in the heart, or active 
in life. The pilgrimage of a soul to the safe 
golden harbor of the New Jerusalem cannot 
be passed without conflict, and spiritual war- 
fare enters essentially into every Christian's 
life. While this is true, yet there are some 
believers who in a special way are the great 
warriors in the life of faith, and in a certain 
sense representative soldiers of Jesus, who 
fight not only the battles of ordinary Chris- 
tians, but are chosen leaders in their genera- 
tion to fight for others as well as themselves, 
and in a special way wrestle with wicked 
principalities, and powers, and demons of 
darkness, and bad spirits in heavenly places. 



Il6 BATTI.K SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

The first uses for ships of any kind, was for 
purposes of pleasure, travel, or commerce; 
but after awhile they became great factors 
in times of war, and now the nations of the 
world take military rank according to their 
navies, and strength in all sorts of war-ships. 
So in our spiritual voyage we have come to 
a place where we must enlist on a religious 
man-of-war, and share the fortunes of battle 
on the high seas. 

I. Battle ships are the special property 
of the government, and are set apart exclu- 
sively for maintaining the liberty and glory 
of the nation to which they belong. They 
are not made for pleasure, or commerce, or 
mere traveling, but are held sacredly as na- 
tional safeguards in times of peace, or as 
instruments of conquest in times of war. 
We saw in the construction of a sail boat, 
that the materials had to be specially adapt- 
ed to the blowing of the wind, which illus- 
trated the soul yielding itself up in a very 
definite way to the regenerating Spirit of 
God. Then we saw in the steamboat an- 
other type of consecration by which the ma- 
terials were adapted to steam power, illus- 
trating a definite yielding of all the powers 
in the soul to God's will in sanctification. 



BATTI.B SHIP CHRISTIANS. II 7 

Now, while the battle ship contains in its 
propelling structure the same principles of 
any other steamship, yet a great many new 
features are added to it, and one of these 
features is that of being exclusively govern- 
ment property, and not subject to the will 
of corporations, or commercial firms, or the 
common people ; but as a standard bearer of 
the nation's glory. All these things re- 
markably illustrate the mission of those he- 
roic souls who are exclusively dedicated to 
the glory of God, to fight the battles of faith, 
to stand in the breach in times of apostacy, 
and to bear the brunt of all God's enemies, 
as well as the shots from the rear of mis- 
taken and weak Christians. There are many 
degrees of consecration to God, and conse- 
cration for various purposes. Every vessel 
of every variety that hails from a country's 
ports, or carries a country's flag, belongs to 
that country ; but a battle ship belongs to its 
government in a higher and more exclusive 
ownership than any other vessel. And in 
like manner all Christians belong to Jesus, 
and repentance in each case must be perfect 
up to one's capacity before he is Justified, 
and each believer must perfectly consecrate 
up to his capacity to be sanctified, but after 



Il8 BATTI,^ SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

the heart is purified from all conscious dis- 
loyalty, there then follows degrees of the 
soul's abandonment to the vast purposes of 
God, and to the various callings and con- 
flicts and achievements that may unfold in 
the administration of God's government. 
Thus battle ship saints are not only pro- 
pelled by the interior fire and water of Pen- 
tecostal power, but they are held in a rigid 
divine ownership, and stand for the Divine 
glory, both offensive and defensive, to at- 
tack Satan and his demons and all his works, 
and to defend the true doctrine of Jesus, and 
His blood, and His kingdom, and His faith, 
even up to the point of martyrdom. Over 
and above their own personal salvation, they 
are specially called to be standard bearers 
for the glory of God. 

2. Battle ships are very expensive, inas- 
much as they must not only have all the 
good qualities of first-class ocean steamers, 
but in addition to these they must possess 
extraordinary strength and weight in thick- 
ness of steel armor, to resist heavy shot, and 
have great capacity, not only for the carry- 
ing of soldiers, but for multiplied machinery, 
and magazines doubly protected for ammu- 
nition. Battle ships must excel in power of 



BATTI.E SHIP CHRISTIANS. II9 

resistance, and in carrying capacity, and in 
making speed, and in going very long dis- 
tances without stopping to take on supplies. 
To combine all these qualities in one ship 
necessitates vast expense of money, and 
skill, and labor. All these points correspond 
with those spiritual and mental qualities 
that enter into the character of a Christian 
hero. A saint who has in him the qualities 
of a true reformer, or reiii^fious leader, or 
Christ-like martyr, must coir.bine not only 
the excellences of all other Christians, but 
have those excellences united and in a very 
high degree. This makes him a very costly 
creature in the Divine Kingdom. God must 
expend upon the structure of such a soul a 
great deal of creative wealth to begin with, 
and there must be special expenditures of 
grace, and providential training, and divine 
equipment. A battle ship saint must have 
a strong, solid mind, and well balanced fac- 
ulties, as a basis for divine grace to work 
upon, as in the case of Abraham, Moses, 
Samuel, David, Elijah, Paul, Luther, Wes- 
ley, Inskip, and an army of others who have 
led the way into new religious movements 
and religious revolutions, and opened up 
fields of spiritual knowledge to their fellows. 



I20 BATTI.K SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

Divine grace does not work on a blank va- 
cancy, but its operations in extent and 
splendor are in proportion to the natural in- 
born capacity of the soul. A battle ship 
Christian must have a genuine experience 
in Bible salvation of the new birth, and the 
power of sanctifying grace, and a life of 
prayer. United to this he must be sound to 
the core in Bible doctrine, such as the in- 
fallible inspiration of Scripture, the atone- 
ment of Christ's shed blood for man's sin, 
the reality of heaven and hell, the resurrec- 
tion and everlasting existence of both the 
righteous and the wicked, the three Divine 
persons in the Godhead, and all sound Apos- 
tolic teaching. God never has used, and 
never will use, as a spiritual leader, or a 
great missionary, or a great soul saver, any 
higher critic, or annihilationist, or second 
probationist, or one weak in Bible doctrine. 
What the natural build of the battle ship is, 
corresponds with the natural gifts of a bat- 
tle ship Christian. What the fire, engine 
and propelling power inside the battle ship 
is, corresponds with the full experience of a 
soldier saint. And what the thick steel ar- 
mor plate is to the battle ship, that is what 
sound Bible doctrine is to the battle ship 



BATTLE SHIP CHRISTIANS. 121 

Christian, and this is the very thought stated 
by St. Paul in describing the armor of the 
Christian soldier, having the loins girt about 
with truth or sound doctrine, as a battle 
ship is girt about with steel plates. In ad- 
dition to sound doctrine and experience, the 
battle ship Christian must have great cour- 
age. Not the wild, reckless courage of a 
spasmodic bayonet charge only, but that 
broad, massive, all-around, solid, abiding 
courage, which corresponds with the awful 
weight and momentum of a battle ship, that 
can quietly repose at anchor, or when need 
be plunge with irresistible force against 
bulwarks or opposing ships. The courage 
that can stand alone with God, that not only 
can face numberless foes, but endure pa- 
tiently the desertion of friends, the misun- 
derstandings and criticisms of other Chris- 
tians, to take up a task that all others re- 
gard as hopeless, to take a stand that is de- 
nounced as insane delusion, to discern vic- 
tory through dark, dense battle clouds, 
where all others see nothing but defeat, to 
work patiently without one word of brag- 
ging on the work, to pray on, press on, weep 
on, fight on, day and night, through love or 
hate, with friends or foes, whether encour- 



122 BATTI^K SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

aged or denounced, requires a celestial cour- 
age that is born out of the heart of Jesus, 
and clad in that shining armor which He 
brought down from the bosom of the 
Father into His human life. In addition to 
invincible courage, the battle ship Christian 
is one of great wisdom, which corresponds 
with the steering and maneuvering of the 
battle ship in an engagement, or its naviga- 
tion. Nov/, there are Christians who have 
great natural capacity, but not much else. 
Then there are Christians who have won- 
derful experiences of salvation, but who are 
not competent in doctrine. Then there 
are Christians perfectly sound in the truth, 
who lack in courage. Then there are those 
who arc very brave, but not wise. Now 
you see as the battle ship must have all the 
excellences of other ships combined, and 
then a whole world of war qualities added 
to them, so the true, heroic saint must have 
all the graces of other Christians, and the 
superadded gifts of courage, and wisdom, 
and a heavenly vision into his life mission in 
a remarkable degree. As battle ships draw 
heavily on the nation's treasury, so battle 
ship saints are very costly, and draw more 
largely on the riches of God's grace. As 



BAT^I^E SHIP CHRISTIANS. 1 23 

Jesus at the touch of the afflicted woman felt 
the drain of mighty virtue going from Him, 
so there are saints that drain more heavily 
if we may so speak, upon the fountains of 
the Divine nature. 

3. During times of peace the battle ships 
are often brightly painted, and used on gala 
days, and national displays, as objects of en- 
thusiastic admiration ; but when war is pro- 
claimed the ships are painted in dull leaden 
hues to render them less conspicuous at sea. 
In like manner battle ship Christians, when 
in the midst of heavy conflicts with Satan, 
and temptation, and sorrow, and poverty, 
and pushing a forlorn hope, and dressed in 
the humble, sober raiment of war clothing, 
they are not very attractive to the eyes of 
many of their fellows, or even of their 
friends. Even the things that men call 
glory are wrought out in obscurity and lone- 
liness, and in times and places which seem 
the very opposite of glory. Every charac- 
ter that to-day men laud to the skies, is for 
doing and saying and suffering some things 
which at the very time they were doing and 
saying and suffering those things, they were 
despised, and cursed, and regarded as fools 
and fanatics. Oh, it is so easy to pitch in 



124 BATTLE SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

with bitter words upon Job on the dung-hill, 
and Jacob sleeping on a rock, and Elijah un- 
der the juniper tree, and Paul all alone be- 
fore Caesar, and Columbus about to be 
killed by his mutineers, and Wesley under 
a shower of rotten eggs, and Madame Guyon 
in an old jail, and Bunyan in a dirty prison 
cell, and John Brown hanging on a gallows, 
and ten thousand other cases where they 
seemed at the point of nothing but poverty 
and shame and disgrace, like Jesus, disrobed 
on a bloody cross, and mixed up with dis- 
graceful characters. These were God's bat- 
tle ships out on the high seas, dressed in 
dull war paint, fighting all alone, and mis- 
understood by everybody on earth, and it 
may be by the young and uninformed souls 
in heaven; and yet of these unattractive 
scenes of battle, and sorrow, and pain, have 
come results that the millions praise and 
magnify from generation to generation. As 
a rule battle ships win their great victories 
far off on the sea, out of the sight of ap- 
plauding citizens, and sometimes under 
great disadvantages of burning heat, or 
heavy waves, or storm, or with crippled 
machinery. In like manner God's heroic 
saints fight their greatest battles in secret, 



BATTLE SHIP CHRISTIANS. 1 25 

unknown to others, like their Master in 
Gethsemane, while their fellow Christians 
are asleep, or if they could look on would 
have nothing to say but a criticism or a 
slur. The greatest and the grandest things 
in every saint's life are wrought out under 
the eye of God, and His angels, and un- 
known to mankind, till months and years 
after, when the bloody sweat, touched by 
the silver light of the moon that sifts 
through the dark olive leaves, has sprouted 
and become a magnificent tree, under which 
in after years posterity sits and cools itself 
in the refreshing shade. Oh, thou blessed, 
lonely, hated, bleeding Jesus, who could 
have dreamed that your blood drops, shed 
under so many curses, could ever have pro- 
duced such a tree as millions now eat the 
fruit of, but from whose pale face they would 
have turned away at the time of thy blood 
shedding. There never was an inspired 
word spoken, or an inspired act performed, 
or an inspired enterprise undertaken, or an 
inspired battle fought for God, that was 
not first baptized in blood, or curses, or pov- 
erty, or disgrace, or sorrow, before it ever 
came forth into honor and glory and the daz- 
zling sheen of a beautiful immortality. 



126 BATTI.E SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

Forever and forever the shameful cross, or 
gallows, or dungeon, must precede the cor- 
onation. Those who attempt to reverse 
this order, and take the crown first, only- 
wind up in an endless penitentiary at last. 

4. Battle ships are expected to go in 
places of danger where other ships could 
not venture, and break down the barriers to 
the ports of other countries, and not only 
defend the nation, but extend its authority 
and conquest into other countries. In this 
respect battle ship saints are on fire with 
missionary zeal to push the Gospel of Jesus 
into distant fields, to bombard the hoary 
castles of ancient superstition, to pierce with 
the rifle shots of inspired truth the corrup- 
tion of heathenism, and carry the banner 
of the cross to all nations, that those who 
are susceptible to divine grace may be called 
out and prepared for the coming day or dis- 
pensation of the Lord. Not only does this 
principle of spiritual conflict apply to car- 
rying the Gospel to new fields, but also to 
the opening up of new fields of knowledge 
out of God's word. It takes a battle ship 
Christian to stand out against long accepted 
church traditions which are contrary to 
Scripture, but have been canonized simply 



BATTI.K SHIP CHRISTIANS. 1 27 

by the schools of men and man-made theol- 
ogy. Luther was a battle ship to open up 
the Scriptures on justification by faith. 
George Fox was a battle ship to open up the 
deeper spiritual meaning in the letter of 
Scripture. John Knox and the English re- 
formers were battle ships on the individual 
right of conscience in connection with 
Scripture. John Wesley and Fletcher and 
others were battle ships to open up the great 
Scripture truth of Christian perfection, of a 
heart filled with pure love. 

There have been other battle ship Chris- 
tians who have opened up God's word 
against the traditions of Romanism, con- 
cerning prayer for the sick, the indwelling 
person of the Holy Spirit the premillennial 
and visible return of our blessed Jesus, the 
two separate resurrections of the righteous 
and the wicked, the imperative duty on 
every Christian to do his part in spreading 
the Gospel to all nations, and in emphasiz- 
ing that life of prayer through which so 
many wonders have been wrought in recent 
times. There is no lack in these last days 
to the uprising of those who pretend to be 
great leaders of new doctrine, and who can 
blasphemously pervert and twist God's word 



128 BATTLE) SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

to mean anything for their selfish ends ; but 
it requires a fathomless humility, and cruci- 
fixion of self, and a meek, heroic spirit, to 
unfold all God's precious word for the de- 
struction of all sin, and the promotion of all 
Christ likeness, unbiased by the traditions 
of men on the one side, and wild heresy on 
the other. As battle ships are exclusively 
for the glory of the nation, so in boarding 
this type of a vessel we must cling closer 
than ever to the three Divine Persons, and 
be more detached from the claims of our 
fellow creatures, and live alone for the glory 
of God, until like our Saviour, the glory of 
God becomes the all embracing motive of 
our lives, and like Him we can say "the zeal 
of thy house hath eaten me up." 



SUB-MARINK SHIP CHRISTIANS. 1 29 



CHAPTER XL 

Sub-Marink Ship Christians. 

What a vast world of unimaginable power, 
of multiplied usefulness, of startling grandeur, 
and of terrific danger there is in electricity ! 
No mortal man understands what it is. The 
great wizards of invention, who ever and anon 
astonish the world with some new electrical 
discovery, know just as little as to what it is 
as the untutored savage, only they know how 
to develop it, and concentrate it, and turn it 
in currents of power for motion, heat, or light. 
It is more than fire, and more than mere mo- 
tion. It reposes quietly in every atom of mat- 
ter, and by chemistry and mechanics it can be 
aroused to a form of energy surpassing all 
the power of wind, or gravitation, or water, 
or steam, or the ordinary function of fire. 
The discovery of how to develop and utilize 
electricity in recent years marks a new era of 
the history of the world, and the turn- 
ing point of another dispensation in the 
destiny of our race. What electricity is 
in the material world, is a type and a 
sample of what the Holy Spirit is in 



130 SUB-MARINE SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

the moral and spiritual world. There is 
in the office work of the Holy Spirit in men 
and angels, a sublime mystery, a vastness of 
unexplored possibilities, a fathomless secret 
©f energy, and yet a distinct consciousness of 
spiritual facts, just as variable and practicable 
in the inner life of the soul, as the uses of elec- 
tricity in material phenomena. It is likely 
that just as few nominal Christians under- 
stand the Personality and deep multiplied 
operations of the Holy Spirit, in proportion to 
their numbers, as the common population of 
men understand the currents and volts and 
operations of electricity. As we have previ- 
ously noticed, discoveries in science, and great 
moral or mental movements among men, oc- 
cur simultaneously, and furthermore it will be 
found there is some sort of kindred or family 
likeness between the inventions in the 
physical world and the breaking forth of 
new intellectual and religious energies. It is 
evident that the human race is rapidly ap- 
proaching some great crisis in the his- 
tory of the world. We are entering the 
verge of the fire age; both the fire of 
God's wrath for the wicked, and the 
fire of divine strength and glory for the 
6oly ones. The Scriptures prophesy that 



SUB-MARINK SHIP CHRISTIANS. I3I 

in making preparation for the coming of His 
Kingdom, there will be discoveries and the 
utilizing of electricity. "The chariots shall be 
with flaming torches in the day of his prep- 
aration. The chariots shall rage in the 
streets, they shall jostle one against an- 
other in the broadways, they shall seem 
like torches, they shall run like the 
lightnings." Nahum 2 :3-4. Here is a 
specific foretelling of cars or chariots 
being run by lightning along the high- 
ways, and the time is designated, when the 
Lord is making preparation for the opening 
of a new age. Another very elaborate 
electrical prophecy is found in the first and 
tenth chapters of Ezekiel, in which he de- 
scribes redeemed and glorified men coming 
in a cloud with their Lord, and led by the 
Holy Spirit over the face of the earth ''like 
coals of fire," and "burning lamps," and 
"flashes of lightning," corresponding with 
the glorified saints on white horses, riding 
down from the marriage supper of the Lamb 
to destroy the Antichrist, and reign over the 
nations, as set forth in the 19th and 20th 
chapters of Revelation. Our "Spiritual 
Sea- Voyage" would be incomplete without 
boarding a sub-marine ship, driven by elec^ 



132 SUB-MARINE SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

tricity down through the silent chambers of 
the sea. Navigation under the water is 
only in its feeblest infancy as an applied 
science, and yet just enough has been found 
out to furnish us a peep into its amazing 
possibilities. As sub-marine ships can have 
no smoke stack, it is evident they must be 
run by electricity. As electricity may be 
looked upon as the culmination and perfec- 
tion of every form of energy in the material 
world, so there is a corresponding spiritual 
state in the mature forms of Christian sanc- 
tification, which combines and intensifies 
into one steady blaze of divine heat and 
zeal, all the various kinds of religious 
knowledge, and love, and power, in the pre- 
vious stages of experience. It has been de- 
scribed by old spiritual writers as a state of 
"fixed fervor," or the state of the "burning 
presence of God," or the "living flame of 
love." It is in the religious life what an 
electric sub-marine ship is in navigation, a 
heart of pure smokeless fire, sunk deep in 
the sea of God's nature, with secret, power- 
ful movements, unknown and unconjec- 
tured by those on the surface on the earth. 
It is the maturing of the summer graces in 
the soul, the focalizing of all true spiritual 



SUB-MARINK SHIP CHRISTIANS. 1 33 

heat into a furnace of melting love and di- 
vine contemplation, the true baptism of fire 
into the glory of communion with the three 
Persons in the one ever blessed God. Let 
us consider the following points about our 
sub-marine vessel and voyage. 

I. A sub-marine ship must combine in 
its structure the knowledge of ship building 
as applied to every other kind of vessel, with 
several new features added to it. It is the 
ultimate stage of aquatic ship building, and 
beyond it will come the air-ship, which does 
not lie within the scope of this analogy, and 
although aerial navigation will some day 
come, it more properly belongs to the next 
age, and will typify the life of glorified 
saints more properly than those experiences 
which are possible to us in our present state. 
The sub-marine ship must be so fashioned 
as to sink at the commanders will out of 
sight in the depths of the sea; which fitly 
illustrates that the soul, in order to reach 
true saintliness, must be gifted with un- 
speakable humility. Such a soul must 
possess a clear spiritual perception into 
the fathomless meekness of Jesus, it must 
make a study of humility, and instinctively 
turn away from every form of pride; not 



134 SUB-MARINE SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

only those varieties of pride that everybody 
has naturally, but also from every delicate, 
subtle variety of religious pride, of spiritual 
self-esteem. To sink dov/n into the depths 
of the quiet, hidden humility of Jesus, re- 
quires great searchings of heart, and mani- 
fold testings of grace, and a special revela- 
tion from the Holy Spirit of divine meek- 
ness, and its unearthly beauty and a sweet 
craving of the heart to be nothing but lowly 
love. Just as ordinary ships cannot, at 
short notice, sink with safety under the 
water, so Christians, even sanctified Chris- 
tians, do not at first learn how to sink down 
into all the lowly mind of Jesus, till specially 
fitted for it by a life of prayer and revela- 
tions of divine things. 

2. The sub-marine ship descends into a 
hidden world, beyond the sight of other 
ships, which agrees with the hiddenness a 
devout soul enters in the advanced forms of 
a life of prayer. Sin and holiness both love 
secrecy, but from exactly opposite reasons; 
for sin seeks to hide its deeds, but holiness 
seeks to hide itself. Isaiah says, "Verily 
thou art a God that hidest thyself,'' 
and the profound secrecy of God under so 
many vails of creation, law, judgment, prov- 



SUB-MARINE SHIP CHRISTIANS. 1 35 

idence, and grace, constitutes one of the 
most thorough tests of genuine faith; and 
yet this hiding of God is not a mere trick or 
merely to try his creatures, but a part of the 
Divine character, and when we walk with 
God long enough to get acquainted with the 
traits of his mind, with the slow, quiet, lov- 
ing movements of his heart, and become as 
it were steeped in the secret night dews of 
his fellowship, we take on his manner of 
hiddenness. Like the ship under the sea, 
we want to accomplish as much as possible 
for God without being praised, or having 
our good deeds known. A true saint has a 
dread of being lifted up, of being honored by 
men, of having its secret w^ealth of prayer 
and love and spiritual vision exposed to 
public gaze. There is a pure, sweet, spirit- 
ual, shy modesty that causes true holiness 
to hide its divine jewels for the knowledge 
only of its divine Spouse. Such a soul en- 
joys doing ten times more than it gets 
credit for, and glides here and there under 
the sea, pouring out prayers, and tears, and 
money, and ministries, out of a passion for 
Christ, hoping that its good deeds will not 
be known till the day of rewards. It has a 
great secret world of thoughts, and medita- 



136 s:jb-marink ship christians. 

tions, and conversations with God; and 
heavenly dreams, and spiritual revelations, 
and secret joys, which would be tarnished 
and torn if exposed to the common knowl- 
edge of others. 

3. Sub-marine ships, by sinking in the 
sea, are enveloped in all the qualities of the 
ocean, and in immediate touch with the in- 
terior attributes of the sea, such as the 
weight of the water, its density, color, fixed 
temperature, purity, and chemical proper- 
ties of salt, phosphorescence, and other 
qualities. In like manner in the deeper 
forms of the sanctified life, where the soul is 
endowed with sufficient self-abnegation to 
sink deep into God in divine contemplation, 
it becomes enveloped in a sense of the Di- 
vine presence, in a steady, tranquil, holy 
awe of the sacred nearness of the three Di- 
vine Persons ; and by the habit of mental 
prayer and divine recollection keeps itself 
in touch with the attributes and amazing 
perfections of God. When the Holy Spirit 
so fills the soul^ that its inner senses are ex- 
panded and brought into vital play, God be- 
comes a living presence, and the heart 
fairly tingles under the Divine touch ; and 
the understanding, chastened and subdued, 



SUB-MARINK SHIP CHRISTIANS. 1 37 

receives the knowledge of God in a wonder- 
ful way. Just as the sea has interior per- 
fections of gravity, purity, and chemistry, 
not recognized by persons on the shore, so 
God has interior perfections of changeless 
temperature of love, of the awful weight, of 
spotless majesty, of unspeakable sanctity, 
of fathomless peace, and of intense thrilling 
vitality, which are blessedly revealed and 
imparted to a soul of tried faith and humil- 
ity, and which many Christians only guess 
at in an intellectual way. In these serene 
depths of love, there is made known to the 
understanding a w^onderful knowledge of 
the most Holy Trinity; the person of the 
eternal Father, the substance and uncreated 
fountain of divinity, who eternally generates 
through his understanding the Word, the 
Wisdom, who is the Son of His love; and 
from the mutual love of the Father and the 
person of the eternal Word, there flows out, 
without beginning, without ending, the 
eternal Spirit, that Divine Person of awful 
sacredness, who reveals to the heart the 
love, the grace, the beauty, and glory of the 
Father and the Son. The soul that abides 
in the furnace of divine love, finds an end- 
less delight in looking at the three Divine 



138 SUB-MARINE SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

Persons, and sings with David, "I have set 
the Lord alw^ays before my face." Then 
there is the knowledge of God's different 
attributes acquired through his daily provi- 
dences, and specific answers to prayer, and 
fresh openings in his word, and the beauti- 
ful flashes of light that open to our minds 
in prayer, and secret touches of a holy trem- 
bling joy, as if a mighty spirit finger touched 
our hearts at the core, or swept our brain 
like an autoharp. Oh, it is glorious to know 
God, to know him personally, privately, 
penetratingly; to feel the foldings of some- 
thing like a summer breath keeping us 
warm and tender in this cold, rough world. 
4. Passengers in a sub-marine ship, 
through glass doors, can discover not only 
the still, noiseless grandeurs of the deep, 
where no storms penetrate, or sounds of 
earth intrude, a type of that shut-in life 
which mature saints have in God; but they 
also can descry the dangers in the form of 
rocks, or hidden shoals, or sea monsters, or 
sunken torpedoes. This fitly illustrates 
that clear, quick, far-reaching discernment 
which real saintly persons have into the 
dangers that underlie a spiritual sea voyage. 
Hardly anything is more rare among Chris- 



SUB-MARINK SHIP CHRISTIANS. 1 39 

tian people, than true discernment into the 
heresies and deceptions that beset the re- 
ligious life. Most Christians are foolish 
enough to read books, or hear men preach, 
with just enough Bible truth to sugar-coat 
some awful satanic lie. The deep sea saint 
is no novice, he has gone through the wars 
with the Lamb, he has learned by experi- 
ence, and through many a crucifixion and 
trial of faith his understanding has been 
whetted to a quickness of perfection, and he 
can swiftly discern the heresies against 
Jesus, such as ignoring Christ's atoning 
blood, or the teaching of second probation, 
or annihilation, or the unconscious state of 
the soul after death, or the denial of the per- 
sonality of the Holy Spirit and of his sanc- 
tifying office, or of the literal resurrection 
of the dead, or of the personal and visible 
return of Jesus to conquer and reign on 
earth, or of the infallible inspiration of the 
Bible. A sub-marine saint will see rocks, 
or shallows, or torpedoes of heresy and fa- 
naticism, upon which many a gay vessel, 
bounding along on the top of the water, 
will strike and go to pieces; and in these 
days of the winding up of this age, what 
multitudes of spiritual wrecks are thrown 



I40 SUB-MARINB SHIP CHRISTIANS. 

Up on the shore, or go down out of sight, 
because they did not discern the wild fire, 
or the self-conceit, or the fanaticism that lay 
hidden in their lives. 

5. There is something in traveling down 
through the sea that corresponds with the 
spirit of true worship of God. For instance 
there is a strange hush in those depths, 
where we are beyond the sights and sounds 
of earth, which illustrates that sacred awful 
stillness when the soul is drawn into deep 
worship, where our own words annoy us, 
and we utter with most intense mental ar- 
ticulation our prayer and adoration to the 
most Holy Trinity. Again, there is a 
strange awe, a peculiar dread, that accom- 
panies a sub-marine passenger, at the very 
thought of being enveloped in the mighty 
resistless sea, which fitly answers to that 
holy awe that falls over our spirits in sea- 
sons of close fellowship with God. The 
principle of holy fear, of sweet and sacred 
dread in the presence of the infinitely holy 
and mighty One, is one of the truest ele- 
ments of worship, and it is a principle never 
found in shallow, blustering, fanatical, and 
self-conceited Christians. You will notice 
that while the real saints are cheerful and 



SUB-MARINE SHIP CHRISTIANS. I4I 

sweetly bouyant, they spurn from them the 
light, trifling, punning, joking, laughing 
dispositions, which undermine and ruin the 
usefulness and solidity of so many ministers 
and Christians. A fun-making Christian 
knows but little, if anything, of the awful 
sublimity of intimacy with God, and of 
being embraced by the vast shining waters 
of those divine perfections in which the 
strongest angels quiver with ecstatic amaze- 
ment, and holy Prophets and Apostles trem- 
bled and cried out with sweet dread. Again, 
the sub-marine ship is the most terrific 
power in time of war for the destruction of 
the enemies' navy; silently planting great 
explosives under battle ships, and making 
inspections beyond the detection of other 
people. This feature has its counterpart in 
that awful power which deep saints have in 
prevailing prayer, not only when they pray 
for the salvation of souls, but also for the 
overthrow and destruction of incorrigible 
sinners, wicked plots, iniquitous enterprises, 
and Satanic delusions. Sub-marine ships 
are rare, and so are those deep mature saints 
who live in unbroken fellowship with God. 



142 ENTERING THE HARBOUR, 



CHAPTER XII. 

Entering the Harbour. 

There is only one best time to die, and 
that is when our work that God assigned 
lis is done, and He is so well pleased with 
ns, or with the work of His ^race in us, that 
He wants to embrace us in Paradise, as was 
the case with Moses, Jesus, Paul, and myr- 
iads of others. To a beauty haunted mind 
conjoined with a loving heart, it would 
seem that the most fitting season to die 
would be at sunset, on a bright Sabbath, in 
the autumn, at the gathering of the har- 
vests. It is simply amazing how the in- 
finite God will consider the wishes of His 
creatures about death, and it is well nigh a 
universal rule that He lets people have 
their desire as to how and at what season 
they shall die. Biography is filled with 
thousands of such instances. The time has 
come in our spiritual voyage, when all our 
various ships must enter the harbour, and 
cast anchor in the tranquil bay of death 
(unless Jesus comes first), to await the 
bright morning when we shall weigh an- 



KNTKRING THK HARBOUR. 1 43 

chor in the first resurrection, and pass the 
quarantine of judgment. Let us first get a 
plain jBible view of death. It is not in any 
sense annihilation, for the two ideas are not 
the same. One apostle speaks of death by 
the Greek word ^^exodusy* or going out 
from the body; and another apostle speaks 
of death by the Greek word ''analysisy^ or 
the taking to pieces, or the separation of 
the human spirit from the body, but never 
one thought of annihilation, or the soul 
being unconscious. Some imaginative peo- 
ple who do not know Christ, speak of death 
in a soft poetical way as taking a delightful 
sleep on a cool clay pillow, under beautiful 
green verdure, away from the fever of life, 
and such like phrases, which is merely an 
animal's dream of death. Others regard 
death as a vast shadowy hiding place to 
escape life's ills, and into whose secret 
windings people can escape the duties of 
life, or the police of God's laws and provi- 
dence, which is the suicide's dream of death. 
Others regard death as so horrible it must 
not be mentioned or thought upon very 
much, lest it unnerve us. And some Chris- 
tians go to the opposite extreme by almost 
denying such a thing as death, and speak- 



144 ENTERING THE HARBOUR. 

ing of it as a ''translation." Death is not a 
translation, which is being caught up to 
heaven in the body, and it is unscriptural, 
and a fooHsh fastidiousness to speak of 
death as a translation. Why can we not 
be plain and scriptural in our views and ex- 
pressions? The Bible declares that death 
is a reality, a sad, solemn penalty for 
breaking God's command. With the ex- 
ception of the few saints that will be caught 
away at the coming of Jesus, death is uni- 
versal, and the time to each of us is un- 
known. Since Jesus has died and risen, it 
is our privilege through His saving grace 
and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to 
have perfect victory over all sin, and all fear 
of death, and by a life of prayer to make 
such constant excursions of faith into the 
heavenly world, and get so well acquainted 
with the scenes and the beings of the spir- 
itual world, that death becomes thin enough 
for us to apprehend beautiful forms, and 
catch the low, soft tones of heavenly voices 
through its vail. 

Some years ago we returned from a sea 
voyage, and reached the entrance of the 
Delaware Bay about sun down, on a lovely 
Sabbath, in the spring of the year. As we 



ENTERING THE HARBOUR. I4S 

passed the light-ship, the pilot boat came 
alongside to furnish us with a pilot up the 
Bay and river to Philadelphia. We saw- 
various ships and sailing craft making for 
the same harbour, some of them weather- 
beaten by storms far off at sea, others small 
coast-wise vessels, and others little sail 
craft that kept close into the shore, but all 
entering the same harbour ; a fitting type of 
how the old and young, the strong and the 
weak, the ripe saint and those young in 
grace, must all gather at the close of life's 
day into the harbour of death. The taking 
on a pilot to steer our ship safely up the 
channel, has its counterpart in the ministry 
of the angel that Jesus sends to the death- 
bed of his servant, to strengthen him, and 
open up the path to the skies, and protect 
the soul from the alarms and dangers that 
beset the hour of death. There are possi- 
ble dangers of running aground, or having 
a collision as we approach the hour of 
death, in the form of conflict with evil spir- 
its, or severe temptation; and our dear 
guardian angel, who has ministered to us in 
ten thousand emergencies in our past lives, 
and fought many a battle at our side with- 
out letting us hear the clash of his armour. 



146 ENTERING THE HARBOUR. 

does not fail to finish his ministry with he- 
roic brotherly service when our strength 
fails in the helpless hour of death, for scrip- 
ture says "they are ministering spirits to 
those who are the heirs of salvation/' or as 
more literally translated, "to those who are 
about to become the heirs,'' as if their 
blessed ministry became more vigilant and 
active in that hour when the Christian is 
most helpless. 

Our ship steamed through the mouth of 
the bay, and several miles through the 
smooth water, for all the ocean waves were 
left behind, and when the stars came out, 
and night settled down, the speed of the 
ship was slackened, a place was selected for 
anchoring, and when the ship came almost 
to a standstill, the Captain from the bridge 
gave the order, the little rope that held the 
great anchor was suddenly cut by a sailor, 

and instantly there was a loud splash in the 
water, and the rapid running out of the rat- 
tling chain cable, until the heavy flukes of 
the anchor had grappled with the earth, and 
the great ship swung around with the gen- 
tle flowing current, and all was still. The 
signal lights were hung up, and the night 
watchers were duly set, to await the com- 
ing morning. 



BNTKRING THK HARBOUR. 1 47 

What a parable this is of the Christian's 
death. As he enters the harbour of rest, he 
leaves the storms of life's voyage behind 
him, and the wheels of this life slow down 
to almost a breathless stillness, and then his 
great Captain, from that lofty bridge that 
spans eternity, gives the command, and the 
death angel cuts the subtle cord that so 
mysteriously unites the soul and the body, 
and suddenly the heart flutters in a feeble 
spasm, the cable of life rapidly runs out, 
and ''the anchor is cast within the vaiF' 
down under the peaceful waters, and all is 
still, and God, who marks the-sparrow's fall, 
sets his watchers to guard the sleeping body 
till the morning when the just shall arise in 
the image of the glorified Jesus. 

Let us take this casting of the anchor to 
represent the act of dying in our allegory' 
and then notice the various kinds of deaths 
that Christians die. There are sudden 
deaths, where people drop without a mo- 
ment's warning, which resembles a ship 
casting out anchor while going at full speed 
or half speed. I have always had a thought 
that in these sudden deaths there was prob- 
ably some intimation of it beforehand, es- 
pecially to real Christians, for God is so 



148 :^NTERING THE HARBOUR. 

good, and loves his true servants so ten- 
derly, it would seem from scripture and ob- 
servation that He would notify in some 
deep and interior way those who are called 
suddenly in His presence. But of those 
deaths of Christians where we can gather 
more details, we may mention the follow- 
ing kinds of deaths : The agitated death, 
which resembles a ship not knowing where 
to cast anchor, lest it might strike a tor- 
pedo, or run ashore, or collide in the night. 
It is not so much the fear of death itself as 
it is of an uncertainty as to what the issue 
may be. Such deaths are apt to be with 
superficial Christians, who in their lives 
have failed to take the soundings as to the 
depths of their inner character, and now 
are brought to face in a most searching or- 
deal with principles of character which they 
have always treated lightly. They are apt 
to be people who lived on the outside of 
their souls, superficial, boisterous, making 
a great noise over a small amount of grace, 
who magnified their sectarianism, or relig- 
ious modes, to the neglect of secret prayer, 
and of interior meditation, and the thought- 
ful examination of their hidden dispositions 
in the calm sight of God. Now that death 



ENTERING THE HARBOUR. 1 49 

is coming, they must drop off all church- 
ism, all forms, all outward noise and demon- 
strations, and face a vast inner world of 
spiritual things, and they are unprepared 
for this change of mental vision from the 
outer to the inner. Boisterous souls are 
always shallow. Nine-tenths of a great 
many people's religion is either hushed or 
torn to pieces at death, which accounts for 
the distress, the agitation, on a good many 
death-beds, and the necessity of special 
prayer meetings for dying grace. 

2. The death of holy fear is in the case 
of those who have vivid perceptions of the 
natural attributes of God, such as His eter- 
nity, and sovereignity, and infinite justice, 
and who have not been accustomed to a 
simple child-like trust in the fullness of the 
atonement. The fear of God, providing it 
does not have any doubt or despair in it, is 
one of the most wholesome conditions of a 
creature's soul, like a bracing frosty air to 
the traveler. This kind of a death does not 
have in it the agitation of the one previ- 
ously mentioned, but is full of solemnity, 
and that holy awe of being ushered into the 
presence of Divine Majesty. If such a 
death is mingled with love and confidence. 



150 KNTERING TH:^ HARBOUR. 

it is one very appropriate for a creature 
thus to meet his Creator. 

3. The very exultant, triumphant death, 
which is the kind that makes tremendous 
impressions on the bystanders, but it may 
be very far from being the best kind of a 
death. Very few deep saints die in that 
manner. It is a well known fact that mul- 
titudes of Christians do not yield them- 
selves absolutely up to God, and receive the 
sanctification of their hearts from inward 
sin, till just before they die; and in such 
cases they often enter into the joy of heart 
purity, and feel for the first time that the 
blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin. In 
such cases the soul is suddenly strength- 
ened with the inlet of new and mighty joys, 
which vent themselves in loud praises, and 
clapping the hands, and the whole being is 
in an ecstacy. This flood of triumphant 
salvation in connection with approaching 
death is most certainly a powerful sermon 
to those around, and yet it could be wished 
that in many such cases they had not post- 
poned the day of their sanctification, and 
full salvation shouting, to so late an hour. 
This explains how it is that some Chris- 
tians whose religious lives have been so 



KNTKRING THE HARBOUR. 15I 

meagre have such triumphant deaths, they 
find their Pentecost at the wrong end of 
life. You cannot measure correctly the 
magnitude of a Christian life simply by the 
joys on his death bed. 

4. The death of strange and awful temp- 
tation. Religious biography furnishes us 
with occasional instances where the most 
spiritual people, and eminently useful, have 
been assailed with most horrible tempta- 
tions just before death. These temptations 
as a rule are such as the soul has never had 
in its previous life, and are the direct as- 
saults of satan and his evil angels. They 
are most invariably awful dark clouds on 
the mind, attended with an almost uncon- 
trollable impulse to curse God, to deny the 
divinity of Jesus, or to reject the efficacy of 
His blood. There are some good, holy peo- 
ple, who have lived for years without 
knowing any personal conflicts with the 
devil, or without the shame and mortifica- 
tion of vile temptations, and it would seem 
that such souls have to die in a furnace of 
trial, as if to make up for their easy and 
happy lives. 

5. The death of visions and revelations, 
where the person sees angels around them 



152 ENTERING THE HARBOUR. 

in the room, and talks with them, and hears 
the music of their harps, and songs of ex- 
quisite and unimaginable sweetness, or sees 
the heavens opened, and the blessed Jesus 
to welcome them. To deny such deaths as 
these is to deny the 'Bible, and the testi- 
mony of tens of thousands of creditable 
witnesses. I have come across several in- 
stances, where persons before death testi- 
fied to seeing Jesus, and seeing angels and 
hearing their songs, and the music of their 
harps, which simply proves in harmony 
with the death of Stephen, there is an inner 
spiritual man, which has the same five 
senses that the outer physical man has ; and 
that these inner senses, on approaching 
death, are opened to see and hear the beings 
and realities of the spiritual world, and 
which proves that the wretched teaching of 
the unconscious sleep of the soul in death 
is false. As a rule children, and humble, 
gentle, guileless souls, have this death of 
angelic visions. 

6. The death of spiritual discernment, in 
which people see the whole world of Bible 
truth, and the possibilities of grace in an as- 
tonishing degree. They not only have a 
cloudless vision of the realities of everlasting 



ENTERING THE HARBOUR. 1 53 

hell and heaven, but of the true state of 
things on earth, the awful worldliness in the 
churches, the necessity of holiness of heart, 
the glories of Christ's personal return, and 
the true way the gospel should be preached. 
In that solemn hour when the mist that has 
hung over men's lives is lifted, and the 
sharp, white light of eternity is streaming 
in, dying ministers have been heard to ex- 
claim, "Oh, if I could get well, and go back 
in the pulpit, how I would preach the Gos- 
pel;" another is heard to say, "I see hell is 
real, and how I wish I could warn sinners 
to flee from the lake of fire which the Bible 
speaks of;" another cries out, ''Holiness, oh 
holiness, the people must be holy, preach it 
everywhere, we must have holy hearts," 
and still another cries out, like the great 
saintly Earl of Shaftsbury, "J^sus is surely 
coming back to this earth to conquer and 
reign, and will you tell the ministers to 
preach it everywhere, that Christ is coming, 
and coming soon." Why is it that we do 
not let the Holy Ghost lift the mist away, 
and pour a sea of light on all these things 
before the necessity of death has to do it? 

7. The death of tender, melting love, as 
if the soul, like an iceberg from the North, 



154 i^NTERING THB HARBOUR. 

had struck the gulf stream, where it is 
melted in the warm current. There are 
people who all their life long have had an 
unattractive type of piety, and their ap- 
proaching death can be predicted by the 
mellowing down of their spirits, and the 
soft and gentle manners that are so unlike 
the way they have lived. Frequently dying 
Christians are melted into an inexpressible 
love for the members of their family, and 
all their fellows, and they pour out their 
dying thoughts in terms of the most sacred 
and tender endearment, as if the summer 
heat of heaven had shot through the chilly 
death sweat, and melted them in a sea of 
love. 

8. The death of sweet, quiet, holy indif- 
ference; where the soul is so perfectly at 
rest in God that it has no choice to go or 
stay. Such a soul has gone through so 
many deaths that it seems accustomed to it, 
and has lived in such intimate fellowship 
with God, as to find him almost with equal 
ease, on this side of death as well as on the 
other side. Such souls are the deep interior 
saints, who, like the sub-marine ship, can 
run in from the ocean, and slip unnoticed 
into harbour without being detected. Those 



KNTKRING THE HARBOUR. 155 

saints who have for years lived on a level 
with heaven's doorstep have no climbing to 
do in the hour of death. 

9. There will be, according to God's 
word, some Christians who will not pass 
through death, but at the close of the pres^ 
ent church age, when Jesus comes to gather 
his saints together, according to Psalm 50: 
3-5, and 2 Thes. 2:1, will be caught up to 
meet Christ in the air. These will be like 
those ships that reach the harbour entrance 
at sunrise, and without casting anchor pass 
the quarantine, and land their cargoes at the 
pier. At last that great day of the Lord's 
return will break, and all the ships who 
have swung at their anchors through the 
night, will weigh their anchors, and pass 
the Divine Quarantine of the judgment for 
his saints, which must not be confounded 
with the subsequent judgment of the wick- 
ed dead, which, according to Scripture, will 
occur a thousand years after (Rev. 20:7-15). 
We who read these lines have not yet 
reached the harbour, but the helmsman is 
steadily heading our ship that way, and at 
every pulse-beat we are being propelled on- 
ward in our destiny. Let us feed our fur- 
naces in secret prayer, keep our spiritual 



156 ENTERING THE HARBOUR. 

machinery in good condition, steer through 
the daily waves by the divine chart, and 
keep a good lookout for the celestial shore, 
that we make the voyage safely; and 
whether we reach the harbour in the even- 
ing, and have to cast anchor over night, or 
whether we reach it in the morning, we may 
be ready to join the vast white winged fleet 
that will sail up the river of light to meet 
the great Captain of our salvation. 



"A POT OF OIL." 

By G* D* Watson* 



Treating of the richness of Christian life when all 
the faculties are anointed by the Holy Spirit. A 
thrilling and beautiful book for spiritual people. The 
chapters are on the following subjects.: 

A Pot of Oil, First Class Love, Signs of Progress, A 
Spiritual Mind, A Spiritual Will, Names of the Twelve 
Patriarchs, A Censorious Spirit, A Gentle Spirit, 
Abrahamic Religion, Vessels of Prayer, Dryness in 
Prayer, The Trinity of Prayer, Joseph a Type of Jesus, 
(The Restoration of Israel,) Faber on Judging Others, 
True and False Fire, Tried by the Ivord, Elements of 
Fanaticism. 

Price of Book, postpaid, 50c, 

Or this book with a dozen tracts and 
Living Words one year, for |i.oo. 



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Specially devoted to the deeper spiritual life 
and the exposition of the Bible on 

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